Day 153

My social media feeds are full of proud parents documenting their children’s return to school. The first day of a new academic year of school; another thing Constance will never do. Envy is fruitlessness. My thoughts are a soundless scream and I press “like.”

Someone suggested that our darling girl, Constance Mar-Yohana, should be named Chicago Magazine’s Chicagoan of the Year. My immediate thought was that Constance’s lack of a publicist would preclude her from winning. Then I clicked on the link. It turns out there’s an online form and last year the attorneys that volunteered to help immigrants caught up in the “Muslim Ban” at O’Hare airport won. That seems fair. They are pretty great. It was an exceptionally kind thing for a stranger to suggest. It was probably the nicest thing ever tweeted.

Not to perpetually be Linus’ grey cloud but no amount of acknowledgment of Constance’s amazingness can bring her back. I bet if someone told Abraham Lincoln that he could be the most famous person in all of American history and assassinated or he could be one of many great presidents mostly forgotten after elementary school history classes, he’d have preferred living a long life and being forgotten.

People choose long painful chemotherapy treatments even when the promise is only to extend their life by months. They make that trade-off because we would all do anything to have just a little more time with the people we love. I can’t even imagine what I would do, what I would trade. It is terrifying to contemplate what I’d give to have Constance back.

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