I talk to dead people, only they’re not dead. I don’t know what to call them. I can’t touch them or see them, but when I go to bed, they are hovering around me, following the lines of the sheets out and away from me. They call me from all places. Even heaven. I listen mostly but tell them the secret I tell no one living: I am dying.

I tell no one because I don’t want to. What will my friends do waiting for the inevitable? There will be a modicum of anxiety when they call. Something that says don’t. Dying is like being a person who hears voices. It just is that way. Enough said.

I’d tell you, but you’re not listening. Or worse, you are and so am I. It’s not so bad, really.

Okay, so here’s the thing. I have SMM, smoldering multiple myeloma, and it affects my immune system. I catch everything humanly possible, including cat scratch fever, like the Ted Nugent song. I am fed up with it. One day I literally jumped from my chair and said, “I can’t take it anymore.”

Just like that. One day. It isn’t fair. I was just getting started living. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but now that time is almost up, I want to start.

A dead person wants to know if I’ve sinned. Up or down, she wonders. Heaven or hell?

They’ve told me the names of the moons around Saturn, the ingredients of mustard, other things until, yeah, I believed they were real. But just to be sure, I had them read the ingredients of mayonnaise too.

It’s nice to be around already dead people, offers some comfort to my distress. And during these last days as I struggle to check my email and cook something that I can eat (my stomach hates food), it’s good to be alone. I don’t have to try and use my brain, come up with something I can talk about. I can forget my diagnosis and that I talk to dead people. I can watch a movie, basically stare at a moving picture without thinking. That part is essential. No thinking. Because when I think, I think this sucks, and I’d rather be doing something else.

The dead say I’m glib.

And maybe I am. Not a bad way to go out. Glib.

So after I declare I can’t take it anymore, it takes a few days and a few doctors before I go to the ER. They give me a bed, and I fall asleep amidst noise, amidst people everywhere dying. I swear. Everyone is doing it. Anyway, I wake up to a man’s face holding my arm. Luckily, I am sick and don’t punch him. It’s the doctor again. I tell him he scared the hell out of me. And then I laugh. Ha. He says he’s sorry. He has big forehead muscles where his eyebrows are. He says it’s the flu. I’m not dying, yet. I just feel like it. I go home with my Tamiflu.

So please ignore the above. I’m not dying yet.

The dead say I am glib. They say, One of these days, sister. One of these days.

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