I never wore it. When I tried, I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, when she was dressed as a prostitute and everyone stared at her like she was a freak. I felt like a freak. So I stuck to bandannas if I went out. At least then it was obvious I had no hair for a reason, rather than someone choosing to wear a bad wig.

After the chemo finished and my own hair grew back, it was thicker, curlier.

“About this wedding.” Kate comes outside again and passes Amanda a coffee.

I brace myself against the railing, prepared for her to try to talk me out of it. “What about it?”

“I want to help.”

“Me too,” Amanda says.

I look from one to the other. “Seriously?”

“Of course. If this is what you want, then we want to help give it to you.”

“Oh, wow. You guys are the best.” I well up with emotion.

“Only thing is,” Amanda says tactfully, “you’re kind of missing something important.”

“You mean a groom?”

“Yeah.”

This is where I got stuck trying to explain it to my mother too. I don’t blame them. When you think of a wedding you automatically think of a happy couple. The man in the penguin suit and the woman in the meringue dress. The plastic couple on the top of the cake. The exchange of rings and the “will they or won’t they” moment as they cut the cake and threaten to wipe each other’s faces with it. It’s kind of a team sport, this wedding business. A team of two.

“Obviously that would have been the ideal situation,” I say. “Although maybe not, given that any man I’d be marrying would be signing up for imminent widowhood.”

“Good point.”

“But it’s not about that for me. Not anymore. I’m not looking for any of the stuff that comes after the wedding. I just want the day itself. I want the chance to wear the dress, and feel like a movie star getting my makeup done by a professional because, let’s face it, I’m kind of shit at the whole makeup thing.”

They murmur their agreement.

“But we can do all that without calling it a wedding,” Kate says. “We can go dress shopping, and do the salon thing. Get some proper photos done. Have a party and invite everyone. But to call it a wedding? I mean, you’re not talking about walking down an actual aisle, are you? What for?”

I take a deep breath. “My funeral. Kind of. But while I’m still here.”

“Explain,” Amanda says. “It’s too early and I haven’t had enough coffee.”

“I don’t want a traditional funeral. I don’t want everyone in black, standing around discussing my life while they eat mini pies and drink watery tea at the local funeral parlor while I lie in a box nearby unable to participate in any of it. What’s the point of that?”

“To say goodbye? And celebrate your life with a proper send-off?”