Surrounded by love, we dance on the balcony under the stars, until we are too sleepy to shuffle another step. Then we are chauffeured to a motel, where we tumble into a mountainous bed and gently consummate our marriage.

It feels like a dream, and yet it is the most genuine thing I have ever done.

We honeymoon on Stewart Island, where we make love in a glass igloo under the blazing glory of Aurora Australis, the Southern Lights. I cry at their beauty, and marvel at the magnificence that is this planet upon which we live.

We fool ourselves, James and I, wrapped in our little bubble of love, that I am well, and that James has sole claim on my body, not the cancer that ravages the inside. But we can only pretend for so long, and two months after the wedding, two glorious, wonderful months in which we only strengthen our love, I develop pneumonia and quickly begin to go downhill. Almost overnight, it seems, my body betrays my will and I begin what I know is the start of The End.

True to his word, James is at my side through it all. The last-ditch medical procedures that fail to buy time, and the conversations that no one ever wants to have, but must. I am admitted to hospital while the doctors attempt to bring my pain under control. It is in the hospital that I become aware that eventually I will be on so much medication I will lose awareness, and assumedly my death will thereafter briefly follow.

The idea of hospice is mentioned, and shot down by me. I don’t want to die in a strange room. When it becomes clear that I am in the end stages and there is nothing more to be done, I ask to go home. A hospital bed is set up in Kate’s lounge, near the window. James sleeps either in the chair beside me, holding my hand, or on the couch. My parents move into our old room. When it is fine I ask for the French doors to be opened. I want to die with the smell of the sea in my memory.

Time passes. I don’t know if it’s days or hours or weeks anymore. A palliative care team visits daily. The morphine helps, for a while, but the pain is constant and gnawing, unlike anything I could have ever imagined. I am not ready, and I am scared. I don’t pretend to be brave to spare anyone’s feelings. I cry when I need to, which is often.

Blink.

In my dreams, James and I live forever, in a tree house beside a waterfall. We have five beautiful babies, with their father’s eyes and their mother’s tenacity.

Cancer is no longer, a cure has been found. No one suffers. At least, not from this.

I hear them. The voices. Muffled, tearful, weary. I hate what I have put them through. Continue to do. Is it my fault? That I am still here? Am I hanging on when I should be letting go? Have I failed at the very thing that comes to us all?