More Than Life

Dearest Husband,

By the time you come to read this letter
I will have died.

But when I am gone,
When this cruel, uncompromising illness,
Impervious, unyielding in the face of all pleas and rationale,
Has rampaged relentlessly through my body
And my life, like that age-old metaphorical candle,
Has forever been extinguished
I want you to smile at the life we have shared
Not cry at the future we have lost.
Cliche, or no cliche.

When I get too sick to attempt the toilet alone
I want you to moan and complain with the same vigorous (and comical) mock-frustration you employ
When I ask you to do anything.
Mow the lawn.
Pick up more milk.
Put your empty contact lenses in the bin.
Wipe my bum.

Thomas believes we should;
'Rage, rage, against the dying of the light."
2/3 of my last GCSE Literature class, in a vote, agreed
Though I suspect that's what the conscientious believed
The 'correct' response was.
(The other 1/3 made up of the Easily Distracted, the Apathetic, the Struggling and those
Surreptitiously using their I-phones at the time).

We have raged together, you and I,
Lamented the injustice of It All
As if it is the business of Life to assess the good deeds and achievement's of one's existence
Before doling out a plethora of cancerous cells
Only to the unworthy;
The criminal, the lazy, the underachieving, the old,
And anyone else hit by a fair Fate's arbitrary scoring system.

We have raged together, you and I,
And now it is time to stop.

It is time, instead, to laugh at our past idiocies,
Our painful embarrassments,
Our private jokes,
Our nicknames - a delicious secret code of our own,
Keeping everyone else out
And just the two of us in.
Squidley. Roo. Little Egg.

It is time, as well, perhaps,
For you to hang the photos I had framed last spring
Of our youthful selves strutting (for how else do the young move?)
Around South-East Asia those years ago
A shameless collage of self-important, self-gratifying self-indulgence
That may just make you smile now.
(And I have nagged you for months to hang them;
Perhaps consider it one of my several dying wishes?)

Dearest Husband,
The sun may be starting to set,
The brief candle may nearly be out,
And the light may well be dying,
But neither one of us has any right to feel wronged.

A shared happiness
Is worth more than life, a thousand times over.
And who would want to live forever anyway?
If there's an Other Side, my Sqidders,
I'll meet you there.