Stories related to illness

Her fifth birthday, she’d had cancer most of her short life yet she was joyous. Her parents took her tears, shed them behind closed doors.

She chewed her fingernails…an irony lost on those who gasped at the sight of her skin-covered skeleton and whispered the word “anorexic.”

She devoured the food so ravenously, I had to ask: “Where do you put it all?” She laughed, kissed me, and excused herself for the bathroom.

Before he awoke from the coma, she sang love songs to him every day. Now awake, he remembers the voice, not the woman, not the wife.

He told a joke at Thanksgiving dinner, but no one understood his words. He died so in bits — easy time payments to Parkison’s hard contract.

You look great! Not that I minded the extra weight. But now, so slim. So beautiful. Don’t you just wish you could stay on the chemo forever?