My Last Smile

CW: Contains themes and/or references to terminal illness and medically assisted dying.

In a way, I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life. Everything I have ever done has led me to right now, to this exact end. This is how all of our stories go, no matter what paths we take. We are born and then we die. I’ve done the first on the list, now it is time to do the latter.

The others around me, there are many, look at me with pained faces. Some offer smiles, although it doesn’t reach their eyes. It instead comes out forced. I know that this is hard for them, but when you get so close to the end, when you understand that death is coming no matter what you do to cheat it, the reality of it all is easier to swallow. It isn’t that I want to die. I would love to feel the fresh mountain air and the warmth of the sun on my skin during a summer day once more, but my story doesn’t go that far. It ends here on this winter day.

I make eye contact with my loved ones and offer a genuine smile, a parting gift that I wish to bestow to them. I want them to remember me as strong, and I want them to know that I am okay with my decision. No one understood it at first. I would say that most of them still don’t, but maybe that’s good. Maybe it means that they’re so far removed from my situation that they can’t relate. That gives me peace. My diagnosis was hard. The doctors told me it was a death sentence. We all have heard this song by now. The blind hope, the experimental treatments being offered in Germany or Sweden, or maybe the tea that cured someone’s great-aunt. I tried my best to appreciate it, but it wasn’t my body that needed repairing at this stage, it was my mind and my soul.

“How are you doing?” Was a question I got asked often by people that meant well enough. “How do you grapple with the fact that you’re going to be six feet under in a few months? How do you accept that you’re going to die when you thought you had decades left to go?” I wanted to scream back in reply. But what started as anger, morphed into a mission as the time went on. I wasn’t going to let my illness kill the only thing that I had left: my love of life. I decided that I would live until I knew it was time. I didn’t want my existence to dwindle and diminish as the months went on.

I did my research and I made my choice: I would receive medical assistance in dying, or MAID. They give it a technical term, I’m assuming because “assisted suicide” left a bad taste in people’s mouth, but I liked that the neutrality of the whole thing. No one was helping me kill myself, and what I was doing wasn’t dirty. What was dirty, would be the inevitable decline in health due to the disease that was spreading in my body. The months of pain that I would face, both physically and emotionally. As I withered away, journeying farther away from the person I once resembled, those around me would suffer as well. I refused to let that happen. MAID was new in Canada, and I was the perfect candidate. I was going to die regardless, why not let me choose when?

Unsurprisingly, my loved ones fought against it at first, but it wasn’t my journey to take for them. They thought that my decision was taking their hope away, but the truth was that the hope of my survival ended when the illness entered my body. As much as I wanted to take the pain away from them, it was the truth that I believed would bring them the most comfort in the end. I knew that the miracles in this world needed to be saved for the other people that needed it more than me.

That’s how I ended up here. I know it’s a funny place to die, the butterfly conservatory, but I couldn’t think of anyplace lovelier. The music of wings flapping lightly in the air around me, something that I never noticed before and I wonder if I’m imaging it. It’s the last symphony that I will ever experience. I didn’t wait long enough that I couldn’t move around, I wanted to remain able-bodied, so I sit comfortably on a bench. The doctor assigned to my case, a charming young woman named Saundra, sits next to me explaining what to expect next. She waits for my nod as confirmation that I’m ready. I smile, wondering if she knows that I’m not focusing on her words. All I can think about is what’s next.

I’ve never been religious, but I’ve always loved the idea of a next life, of reincarnation. I hope that I’m able to bring some of this peace and wisdom into my next body and mind. I wonder if things will feel different next time. It doesn’t matter what the answer is, I’ll find out soon enough. I reach my hand out and squeeze whoever is closest to me. I can hear muffled sobs somewhere in the background. Things are fading quickly and slowly now. It’s blending together. I feel joy and fear and excitement.

In some active part of my mind, I have the epiphany that Mona Lisa was smiling in her painting. Da Vinci was able to capture a moment of bliss, and I wonder if she was had the same clarity that I have now. I imagine that is what my face looks like now, restful with the slightest of smiles. I hope everyone knows that I’ve reached my moment of bliss. A tear escapes my eye right before they close, and a butterfly lands on my cheek. It’s here to take me on my next journey, and away I go.