Macaroni Necklaces
“You're just one of those ghosts
traveling endlessly.
Don't need no road
in fact they follow me.
And we just go in circles.”
-Paramore

Part one
67 Sleeps


Hey Momma, it's Little Boy. It's been sixty seven sleeps since you tucked me in, I've been counting. Miss Brown says my numbers are real good and my letters even better. She always pats my head, Momma, I think it's 'cause she knows it's been sixty seven days. She must be counting, too.

So anyways, Momma, I really like Miss Brown, even though she smiles real sad at me sometimes. Remember when you made me macaronies when I stayed home sick from school, Momma? I do, it made me feel like one thousand dollars when you made me macaronies. Dad always forgets to put pretzels on top like I like and like you like, too, so I'm real starved for macaronies all the time, and so yesterday in play time I got the craft macaronies and from the big shelf in Miss Browns room and some other boys with trucks and power rangers laughed and pointed at me, but I had fun at the craft table with the girls, momma, so it's okay and I forgive them because they can have macaronies whenever they want I bet so they just don't get it, momma, but like I said, don't worry, because I forgived them very much for laughing when they just didn't know.

I got some purple string and pink glitter because I remembered those are the only colors you ever EVER paint your toenails in the summer time, so they must be your favorite, right? When Miss Brown stopped smiling sad at me to smile happy at some other kids I snuck a few pieces in my mouth and it was even worse than when dad makes it and forgets the pretzels on top but for some reason it made my tummy feel a little happier inside so I kept sneaking macaronies, and when my tummy was so full I could absolutely burst, your necklace was done, and it was so pretty so I showed Miss Brown.

She smiled extra sad and patted my head and even kissed my cheek.

“It's beautiful!” she said real sad with a clown smile painted real messy over top, or maybe the other way around actually, momma, she might not really be so sad, I just thought about that. But that's okay, I guess, I still like Miss Brown. “Will you let me wear it, maybe?” She said real nice and I frowned in my head, momma, because that necklace was for you, but she knowed that it was sixty seven days, so I couldn't say it was yours without another happy/sad face and I didn't want her to run out of clown paints before next time she really needed them. “Mhmm, you can wear it.” I said real calm and started making another necklace for you, but this time it wasn't as fun, because I knew no matter how pretty it'd never be as pretty as the first. So there wasn't much point in wasting all that glue, Miss Brown says it's not real cheap.

Maybe one day I'll get the necklace back from Miss Brown and you can wear it. I'm getting bigger, dad measured me last week and so did the nurse at my checkup. I'm getting real big and soon I'll be tough enough to get your necklace back and also undig you from down there so you can wear it. I'll be real tough then. Now I'm only little.
Anyways love you momma for always, love little boy.






Part Two
500 mornings


Hey, Sunshine. I miss you.

It's been over a year since you had a heartbeat for me to listen to. I guess towards the end the beats started dwindling, and I knew that. There wasn't much for me to listen to, but I did anyway. When I was sent home after visiting hours I'd still hear the beats in my ears, and it would terrify me because they were never capable of matching mine. Remember when we would lie awake at night and stare at the shadows the streetlights cast on the old ceiling fan, not saying anything, your head on my chest, and it was as if there was only heart. A harmony we'll never share again.

Anyways, I miss you. Little boy misses you, too, but I don't think he really understands, Sunshine. I don't think he understands that you are gone from him. He has grown so much, sweetheart, I wish you could see him. You know, I think I underestimate him sometimes. How smart he is, or how kind he is. I swear, sweetie, you should see the projects he brings home, hear how fast he reads. He's witty. He says things so funny they could bring me to tears, not because they're cute or nonsensical, but because he's impossibly wise beyond his years. I love that about him, I like that he's got an advantage out there. He's smart enough to build an exterior, and he needs one. We all do, and his will be thick, and it will keep him safe. I think if you could read this, you'd roll your eyes. I remember when he was born and you held him in your arms and pushed cowlicks of fairy blond hair behind his ears, and said “all I want is a child stupid enough to love me no matter what reasons he has to feel otherwise.” I guess at the time I thought you were talking about grounding him or taking his favorite toys away if he didn't eat his broccoli. I didn't know you had something specific in mind. I guess I didn't really know much of anything back then. Look where we are now. You gone and him still making macaroni necklaces with your favorite colors even though it's hard to believe he actually remembers what you look like, and me writing letters you'll never read. Funny how things happen and we end up with other things. Things we don't want, or didn't ask for.

So baby, I miss you. I miss the part of you I knew.

And today, your doctor called me. I hesitated at the caller ID and my hands sweat and I thought of the little boy and his macaroni necklaces and I wished I'd never had to put this doctor on speed dial in the first place.

“I'd really like to speak with you today, if you can get out of work. It's important.” He sounded nervous. He sounded guilty, almost. Guilty is something you don't want to detect in the voice of the doctor that could not keep our wife alive.

So I drove to the hospital, and I brought the boy, who brought the stuffed elephant, who brought comfort.


“What is it?” I asked when we arrived, sweating, as I always did when the Doctor and I shared a room. “Is it alright for him to hear?” I patted the boy's shoulder, who bit the elephant's ear and stared at the floor. I don't know if he remembers your face, but he remembers the place you lived, and he will not look up.

Doc smiled at him. “Hey, buddy. How've you been?” He asks, friendly, though the boy just furrows his face into my arm and bites harder onto elephant's ear.

“Maybe it's best if he sat just outside the office.”

“Alright, Bud, just stay right here. You'll be able to see us through the glass.”

“It'll only be a minute.”

“It'll only be a minute, alright?”

Elephant ear, elephant ear. Small nod. I kiss his head and ruffle his hair. Like you would. It's not the same with me, I guess. Not much is.



“I've been living with some knowledge about your wife's condition for too long, and I swore to her I would not break patient secrecy, but I want you to know what happened to your wife, and I want you to know for real.”

“I..I don't understand. Secrecy?”

Doc takes a very deep breath and closes his eyes and I am alarmed by how I am the one with the cryptic phone calls from doctors and a dead wife and a sad little boy, and yet HE is the one distraught. He doesn't know distress. He doesn't know death. He knows dead bodies, but not dead wives.

“She made me promise that the details of her illness remain completely confidential.”

“I'm her husband. That's her kid out there, our kid.”

“I know, I'm sorry. She specifically said that you were to be kept at distance. That the secrecy did not elude you. In fact, it was for you.”

“So why are you telling me this? Respect her wishes, Doc, she's dead.”

Another deep breath from the Doctor. Maybe he knew distress.

“She had been sick for over three years before she passed.”

It was silent in the doctor's office I'd grown so familiar with. I could practically recite every medical poster on the walls. I had the patterns of the creases in his face memorized. I looked out at our son sitting in the small waiting room, looking at us through the glass windows, elephant ear in his mouth. His hair thin and fair, like yours. He raised his eyebrows and I smiled at him.

“That's impossible. She was diagnosed a month after our son was born. That was only two years before...just two.”


“I know that's what she told you--”

“You told me, too.” I said. “I sat in the office and you said you were sorry, but she had a tumor and not long, and then we talked about therapy and time and--”

“I know. I know. But this was not the diagnoses, I'm sorry. She was diagnosed, by herself, a year earlier.”

It was my turn for theatrical deep breathing.

“What are you saying?”

“Your wife was diagnosed with early stages of cervical cancer in August of 2008. It was early, with a few months of radiation and chemotherapy we could have killed the cells. But she wanted a baby. She wanted a baby more than I was able to understand, seeing as I'd seen the cells and I understood the hourglass she wasn't paying attention to. But she wanted a baby. She didn't want the treatments to affect the pregnancy I think she conjured the idea of right here in this office. It was as if the hunger for motherhood came to her the instant she discovered she might have to be starved. So she fought me, and finally, to my dismay, we agreed. She'd get pregnant and have the kid she craved so desperately, and then we'd go to work on the tumors.”

As he spoke, I just stared out the window at our son. He is beautiful, but the more I stared, the less unique he looked. As if the farther I detached the word “son” from the word “mine” the less special he became. So I sat there staring at some kid in the lobby chewing on the ear of a stupid elephant and reading a Dr. Seuss book he'd found among the protocol outdated cooking magazines, and I wondered why, in your right mind, he was ever worth it.

“Through the nine months she carried him, the cells multiplied. We anticipated this. So did she.”

The kid flipped the pages faster than any other six year old I'd ever seen. He looked like you, and it frightened me that you were dead but your genes and DNA were still alive. So I stopped looking at him.

So sunshine, I miss you. I miss when I was more important to you than anything else. I miss when your dreams involved me. I miss when you weren't so thin, even though you spent all that time wishing you were, and I miss when you were young and healthy and the future didn't matter, because it was infinite. I miss being part of your infinity. It's juvenile to resent him, I know that. It's terrible that I blame him. But somehow I do, and I can tell you this, because honey, you'll never read it. You're dead, and he's alive, and you had to make that choice, I guess, and somehow you thought it'd be best to leave me with a lookalike who lives by half your chromosomes instead of with you, the real you, the one you were when it was just me and you not Mr. and Mrs. Before doctors.

So I took the boy home from the hospital and we were very quiet, and when he asked about the visit, I wanted to tell him it was his fault. You killed her, I said in my ruined mind. You killed her and how am I supposed to love you now.

So we drove without speaking and I did not listen to see if his heartbeat matched mine.

I love you, and I'm sorry for it.
-your husband


Part three
two months before


To my husband and child,

As I'm writing this, I am thinking about the day when you'll have to read it. I guess it might be sooner than I'd like, but who am I to believe I have a choice? I've had to learn lately that, though impossible to accept, really, I'm not the only one who can control my life and what happens in it. My entire life, I've allowed myself to furrow into this place inside myself where I am what I believe I am, and not what I really am. It's easy to dig this kind of hole, and it's easy to crawl inside. It's not so easy when you have to climb out.

So I'd walk down streets or halls or aisles and I'd look at the other people buying milk or rushing off to work and I would allow myself the ignorance of imaging these people were being pulled by puppet strings. The woman squabbling with the cashier is letting herself be manipulated by Father Time or by the bank or by her husband or her boss, and the strings are getting tangled, and it's all because the puppet master is anyone other than herself. And I'd pray that these people found the strength to cut the strings before it became impossible to unravel them. I was stupid, and as you read this, you understand. You are not me, my boys. You can see my strings even when I blind myself to them. And I can see yours, and I try very hard to keep them straight for you so that you won't get tangled.

But loves, I've been hiding some strings from you. I've got a lot of greedy puppet masters, I guess, and I'm not quite ready for you to know just how greedy. So I hope this letter helps you understand. I'm not so sure I quite get it, myself. You'll have time to figure it out for me, to learn and accept what life decides to thrust upon us. I won't have that time. I have to skip steps like “denial” and “depression” and skip right ahead to “acceptance.” I'm not sure that's possible. Another thing you'll have to figure out for me when I'm gone, and you're still here. I am sorry it had to happen this way. You here, me there. I suppose life and death are inevitable. I wish our dreams were, too.

So first to my husband.

We met on a cable car. I was nineteen, you were twenty one. It was New Years Eve in San Francisco and the fog had cleared. And I could see you in the back with your friends, tipsy and laughing at jokes I wasn't a part of. You said I was beautiful and kissed me at midnight.

You know this story, I don't know why I'm telling it. Maybe because I probably won't ever tell it again. And it's a good story, And I'll miss telling it. Don't ever forget it, okay? Tell the boy. Tell him about us. Don't let our stories die with us, okay? Anyways, it was New Years. Two years later to the day, we were married. Years and Years, perfect years. You kissed me at midnight.

There were lots of midnights. There were midnights when it was dark in our house and I couldn't see my hand in front of my face and I couldn't see you, and we weren't looking. There were midnights that felt like mornings. There were mornings that felt like midnights. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.

Honey, I don't know where I am going with this. With this sentence. With this letter. With my thoughts. With my ideas. With my breathing, my sickness. With my life. But I know we're reaching an end, and I'm going to have to learn where exactly it is I've been lead, and I don't know if I am ready for that. We had a life, separate and together. We grew up, we went to parties, we had sleepovers, we saw movies, we read books, we went to school, we went to college, we traveled the world and took pictures of each other instead of the landscapes, we fell in love, we got married, we got jobs, we had a child, I got sick...and then there's a conclusion. It's like the last line of your favorite book, darling, the one you read to me in college when we first started dating after New Years. The Great Gatsby. And you would always skip to the end, even though I hated that, and read the last line, over and over. “So we beat on...” I can still hear your young voice, soft in my ear. “boats against the current. Borne back ceaselessly into the past.” And I'd ask what it meant, and you'd say you thought it was about people, and history. Milestones that don't really mean much because if you take the entirety of human history and shrink it to fit in a single day, mankind would only be around for maybe an hour, so how important could we actually be? We're nanoseconds. Maybe smaller. And you said you really liked that idea, because it hurt to think about. You were that kind of person, in college. You liked ideas that involved things bigger than yourself. And then you met me and you started reading different kinds of books. I hope you don't regret that I made your thoughts smaller. I hope I made your nanoseconds last a little longer.

But I don't have time, literally, to be small or to be big. I don't have time much for anything, so I'm just going to be what happens, and say what comes out, and think whatever my mind decides without my consent. So here's this:

I don't want to be a boat against the current. I'm not very smart, I hardly know what that line means. But I get it enough to know that I don't want to be pulled back anywhere. I want to be pulled forward. And maybe he meant mankind by “we”, and not individual people, so maybe I sound simple minded. But I was part of mankind for thirty four years, and I believe I should have a say in what happens to me. I don't want to be a boat against a current, sweetheart, and I'm scared I will be. And scarier still, I don't know if I'll have the choice. I don't know if I'll become something else, something better or something worse, or if I'll just disappear.
I think it might be the latter. I hope it's not, but maybe that's because I've never been brave, you had to do that for me all these years. I don't have practice in courage. I don't have time to change that about myself now.

But remember when we used to wake up and tell each other our nightmares and dreams and make it better, and safer, and calmer? That's what we have to do right now. And I know by the time you read this it will be too late to help me. But I know you would if I had given you the chance.

My dream: matter is neither created or destroyed. It's a circle, not a line. I'm going somewhere. Something will happen. I don't know what. But something. And that's something to wait for. When I close my eyes, there will be something else to open them to. And even though that something may not be what I imagine, it's something. And if that's true, I'm not a boat. Or maybe, I am, I don't know, like I said, I never really understood what that meant. But I've got some ideas.

So darling, I love you. And I miss you already. I will miss midnights that feel like mornings, and I'll miss cable cars, and you calling me Sunshine. I'll miss holding your hand when it's cold and I forgot my gloves. I'll miss wearing your tee shirts to bed. I'll miss your scent. I'll miss waking up next to you. But every morning that felt like a midnight was worth it, okay? And I love you. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't control whether or not I'll grow old with you. But I had to make a choice, I guess, and I guess if you really thought about it, I could have controlled it. I did control it, actually. Not in the way you would have wanted, and not in the easy way, but in the best way, I truly believe that. And I want you to know that what I did was my decision. And I don't have very many of those left. And I want you to honor them.

I told Doc not to tell you, but I know he will. I can see it in him. He's waiting for when I'm gone and he can free himself of what I've done to him, which he says is basically sanctioning a suicide, but don't believe that. I don't. He doesn't really, either, but he wants me to be guilty. He wanted me to change my mind. It's too late now, and I wouldn't take it back. I wouldn't trade this for anything.

So in case he hasn't told you yet, I will. I was sick before the boy, and I let myself get sicker so we could have him. I wanted him more than I wanted myself. And I know that to you this might sound selfish: I chose him over us. But darling, he's more important than me, and I hope you understand that. I did this because of the boats against the current. I did this just in case my dream of matter being a circle was wrong. I did this so I wouldn't die without leaving a piece of myself behind. Honey, you never wanted children, I know that. I know we never talked about having a baby seriously, and when we did, we always said “not now, not now...now's not the right time.” But I didn't have any time. And when I told you I was pregnant, you were scared and you were nervous, but I know you were happy. You were as happy as you were on New Years Eve in San Francisco when you were twenty one. And I know that if you would have known the truth about our child your smile would not have been as wide. And I wanted to see that smile, sweetie. I didn't know how many I'd have left.

So darling, I'm dying. I'm dying and I'm going to leave you soon, and I am scared. I am so scared. I spent my life imagining that by the time this point came, I'd be old enough to be ready. But I don't think you can ever be old enough, really. And thirty four isn't nearly old enough to tell. So I'm leaving. But there's him. And he is half me, and he is half you. And I'll be gone, but he won't be. And I want you to understand that I am dying now so that I'll never have to die for real. There will be him, and there will be his children, and theirs. And matter is a circle, not a straight line, so let's keep that hope alive even when I'm not here to hope for it. I hope you understand that I won't ever leave you.

Honey, don't blame him. He loves you terribly, and I love you both even more. He's got strings, so please be there to untangle them when he needs you. And you've got them too, and just know I'll be with him when he needs to help you, in return. So let him help you. And help him, too.

I love you. You'll always be the morning to my midnight. Thank you for being the most lovely puppet master of them all. You're the only one that was ever careful with me. And I love you.


And to my child, my only child.

You're little, but your mind and your heart are very big. I hope you never grow into them. You are everything I could ever have asked for in a child, and more, so much more. You are kind, and smart, and brave, and beautiful, my baby, you are so beautiful. You were born with a full head of fairy blond hair, and on that first night, I combed my fingers through it instead of sleeping. I stared at you and I twisted my fingers through your cowlicks while you slept, and I wanted to be alive forever so I could watch your hair grow out and your skin get tighter, and your legs get longer. I never wanted to take my eyes off of you. I love you more than I knew possible, and I knew I wouldn't have time to see you for much longer so I didn't dare look away. I took in every inch of you. You were the reason, darling, that my short life had a purpose. And I never want you to forget that.

You got a little bigger, and my hair got a lot thinner. You liked pretzels on top of your macaroni. You had a thing for macaroni, sweetie. You made me macaroni necklaces with my favorite colors, and I'd wear them everyday, all day, all night, when I made you dinner, when we watched movies, when we played, right now, when I am lying in bed unable to do much more because I know that I'm nearing “the end”, and you're at preschool, and your daddy's downstairs reading books to help his ideas get bigger again because I've been telling him that in a while I won't be here to keep them small and I know he doesn't want to listen to me, but he can't argue with his dying wife. But your necklaces are prettier than any necklaces money can buy and they are yours, and I can see where you got tired and changed the patterns and I can see where you got excited with the glitter in some places and I can see where your fingers slipped when you were tying the yarn in knots, and I can see you making this necklace and smiling and you are so happy and I want you to smile like that as long as you live, sweetheart. Do it for me, please. I know that I am going to leave you before we really get the chance to know each other, but baby, when I leave, I will remember you making macaroni necklaces. I'm going to remember you sleeping on the night you were born and the texture of your hair. And honey you're little. You're too little to remember me, really, as anything other than I am now, which is the farthest from what I would ever want you to remember. And it's not my decision to choose how you remember me. So I want you to decide for yourself. I want you to think of me as whatever crazy, inaccurate, wildly romanticized fabrication your incredible little mind dreams up, and I want you to make up stories about me where I can be whatever you need me to be, whenever you need me to be it. I want you to think about me not as I was, but how I am, to you. Because I'll never leave you. I am half of you. And matter is a circle, just like your macaroni necklaces that have no start and no ending, I hope, I hope you never stop creating them, and I hope you never stop loving them, and honey just know I'll never stop wearing them, because I'll never go away, and neither will they, and neither will you.

Your father will be very sad, sweetie. And when he reads this, it might make him even sadder, though I hope it makes him better. I can never tell what his emotions will do to him. But he'll get better. He'll smile again, I promise you. And though he'll be sad, he'll never stop loving you. Help him, okay, baby? Help him to know that you are half me and half him and that we are all macaronies on string waiting to be glittered by a boy who is smaller than his heart and always smiling. Be that boy as long as you live. And I'll be there too. My favorite puppet strings were the ones you made for me. Just know that I wouldn't cut them for anything.

Darling, your father might love again, and I want you to be okay with that. It's very hard for me to say this now, but I truly believe that once I am gone I will want, if I am still somehow capable of wanting things, nothing more than for you both to be happy. Help him to know that it's okay to be happy. And you, too, baby. It's okay to smile.



So I could keep writing until somehow my body tells me it's okay to stop and it's okay to go and it's okay for me to leave and I depart. But even then, I don't think I could say everything I want to say, need to say. So this will be it, I suppose. I am sorry I am a boat against the current, and that I must, in some ways, end. But don't forget the macaroni necklaces, love. You'll forget me, but remember to recreate me in every way you need to. Let me be the star of your stories, at least until one day you meet a girl, whether it be on a cable car on New Years Eve or anywhere else your life takes you, and it is time for me to bow out and her to step in. At least until then, and when that time comes, love her as much as your father loves me, and love your children as much as I love you. I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you, darling, I love you. I love you. I love you.

So to my husband and my child...here's my life, and all that comes after.
Understand that it was worth it.

-Mommy and Sunshine