I'm dying. They tell me: myeloma. And I think: Myeloma. All mine. Myeloma. Nothing I can do -- nothing -- can get me out of this failing body.

It's a dream, but I don't know that yet. I am dying. My mother ricochets between comfort and a hard lecture spawned by my abject self-pity. I am utterly destroyed by the news, unable to summon the will to live out my final weeks gracefully. Nothing is beautiful. All my ambulance shifts, all my nights with the dying and the fearful have done nothing to insulate me from this fate. It arises within me. It will take only a handful of days to destroy all that my life has built in its many years. Nothing -- not a skillful turn of phrase, not a dark look, not a heroic rescue -- will slow my body's deterioration in the slightest.

My nephew will forget me. I will be nothing more than a name, emptied completely of care.

When I awake, I watch the play of headlights on the bedroom ceiling. A long time passes. Susan sleeps beside me. I feel the dying inside me still.

It haunts me through the day. In the shower I look down at myself and think: failing. Dying. The wetness is blood, the heat fever. Weakness and collapse. Shampoo slippery in these withering fingers. An idea occurs to me. I must write letters to everyone I've ever cared about, telling them everything, and insure that the messages will be delivered after my death.