Mike treated the airplane safety card like an instruction manual for surviving space. He studied every picture before leaning across Stella to inspect the window.
“Do clouds feel wet when we fly through them, Mom?”
“I think so, sweetheart,” she said.
Our terminally ill son spent months dreaming about his first flight to Disneyland.
“How wet?”
“Probably cloud wet, baby.”
Mike considered that answer seriously.
I looked away before he saw my face.
For months, my son had asked questions about medicine, blood counts, and whether hair remembered how to grow. Hearing him ask about clouds felt almost indecently beautiful.
I looked away before he saw my face.
He pressed his forehead against the glass as the plane rolled toward the runway.
Outside, a baggage worker lifted both hands and waved.
Mike waved back with his entire arm.
“He saw me, Dad!”
“He did, sweetheart.”
The engines rose.
Mike gripped both armrests, laughing as the ground dropped beneath us.
The engines rose.
Beside me, Stella reached across the narrow space and closed her hand around mine.
Neither of us spoke.
We had learned that certain moments broke if we named them.
***
Eight months earlier, Mike had been playing soccer in our backyard when he stopped chasing the ball.
He stood near the fence with one hand pressed against his side.
We had learned that certain moments broke if we named them.
“Cramp?” I called.
He shook his head.
That night, he developed a fever.
Three days later, a doctor pulled two chairs close to his desk and explained that our eight-year-old had cancer.
By the time he used the word terminal, Stella had already stopped breathing normally.
Our eight-year-old had cancer.
I remember watching the doctor’s pen roll toward the edge of his desk.
It fell.
No one picked it up.
After that, our life became appointment cards, plastic wristbands, and food Mike was too nauseated to eat.
His cleats remained beside the back door. Mud dried in the grooves.
I could not bring myself to clean them.
His cleats remained beside the back door.
At the hospital, nurses learned which arm he preferred for blood draws.
Stella packed overnight bags without checking a list.
I became good at sleeping upright and lying to relatives on the phone.
“He’s having a decent day.”
“Treatment went fine.”
“We’re taking it one week at a time.”
“Treatment went fine.”
Mike heard everything.
He also knew when we were pretending.
One afternoon, during another infusion, a Make-A-Wish volunteer named Claire sat beside his bed. She wore green sneakers and carried a folder covered with stars.
“If you could go anywhere,” she asked my son, “where would you go?”
Mike did not hesitate.
“Disneyland!”
He also knew when we were pretending.
“Why Disneyland?”
He glanced at the clear medication dripping into his arm.
“Because nobody is allowed to be sick there. Only happy.”
Claire’s smile held.
Mine did not.
