“You must eat, Annie.”
Why must she? Polly was dead. Polly was dead and there was no point to anything. Polly was dead. No matter how many times Annie said it to herself, it still wouldn’t sink in. This time, she didn’t know how she would ever put herself back together.
DAY 88
Speak in public
Was it possible one woman could have known so many people, in just thirty-five years of life? The church was rammed; they’d managed to move it out of the hospital, but all the other details of the funeral were the same. Except that Polly would not be there. Not alive, anyway. Annie walked down the aisle, feeling like a shy bride at a wedding. She’d spent too long getting ready, thinking Polly would at least want her to wash her hair, and put on makeup, and find tights that didn’t have ladders in. Plus, she wasn’t used to walking in the new silver slingbacks she’d bought a few weeks before. She hadn’t known it at the time, but she’d clearly been getting them for Polly’s funeral. And now here it was.
She found a seat near the front, behind the family, and squeezed in, murmuring apologies. George was in front in his spangly MC suit, eyes red and raw. On either side of him were his parents, Valerie in a big red hat with a veil, and Roger, stony-faced, in a green tweed suit that needed dry cleaning. And right in front of the altar, in that biodegradable hemp coffin—that was Polly. Her body, her mind, everything she’d ever been. In a box. Forever.
She sat down, looking about her. There was Suze with her hipster boyfriend, chiding him to put his phone away. She looked thin and miserable, in contrast to her cheerful coral-pink dress. There was Milly in green, trying to control her toddlers, one in a blue dress and one in a little suit, while her husband shushed them ineffectually. And there were other people, too—Costas, dressed in a very nice suit indeed, charcoal gray worn with a pink tie. Dion, looking frail, leaning on a stick, in a pale blue suit that must have once fitted but now drowned him. And behind, taking up nearly half the church, were the hospital staff. Cleaners. Receptionists. Radiographers. Zarah had come, of course, and Miriam, too, even though she hadn’t known Polly. Annie gave them a little smile. There was Dr. Quarani, as well. And beside him—her heart tripped over in her chest—Dr. Max.
He’d put on a suit for the occasion, but it still looked crumpled, his hair sticking up like Wolverine’s. His face was creased, too, with tiredness. He caught her eye; she looked away.
There was a motion at the front, and a vicar came out, flanked by a man with long gray hair and a rainbow-colored chasuble around his neck. This must be Polly’s friend the humanitarian minister. Annie met George’s eyes. He raised his to the sky and gave a small smile and shrug. It was Polly. What could they do but go with the flow?
“Dearly beloved, you are welcome here today,” said the vicar, a friend of Valerie’s from book group. “I’d like to also extend a welcome to Reverend, uh, Ziggy, who will be celebrating this with me, in accordance with the humanitarian spirit Polly wanted us to bring today. As requested, you’re all a riot of color, and I know she would have loved that.”
Reverend Ziggy stepped to the lectern. “Peace, dudes. Let Polly’s spirit shine like a rainbow, yeah! Can I get a hell, yes?”
The congregation made a vague mumbling sound. The vicar went on, manfully. “We will now have some short eulogies from Polly’s friends and relations. First, she has asked that we hear from her friend Annie Hebden.”
That was her. Annie clutched her index cards, already creased from her sweating fingers. She walked up, feeling everyone’s eyes burn on her. Oh, God, Polly. You owe me. You bloody owe me big-time.
Walking there seemed to take ten years. She was terrified she’d slip over in her heels. The lectern was too high, so the vicar had to adjust the microphone for her, and as he did she saw he’d cut himself shaving under one ear.
“Er, hello.” The church was deadly silent, people in reds and greens and oranges staring up at her.
“Um. It’s actually Annie Clarke now, or it will be—something most of you won’t get, but I think Polly would like.” Polly, who was in that box just in front, and wouldn’t ever know. “I, uh, I met Polly fairly recently actually, compared to most of you. But we spent a lot of time together, and I think she asked me to speak today because she knew I learned the most from the way she approached her death. It was, quite simply, remarkable. She took most people’s worst nightmare—a diagnosis of terminal cancer—and turned it into a chance to be joyful, and productive, and change her own life, but even more than that, other people’s. And one of those people was me.”
More silence. She plowed on. “When I met Polly, I was miserable. I hated my life and everything about it, and I felt like the loneliest, most put-upon person in the world. Well, naturally Polly couldn’t have that, so she played her cancer card, as she called it. I didn’t want to know at first—honestly, I thought she was mad—but she drew me in, and, well, here I am. So I want to share what I learned from the last eighty-odd days.”
She took a deep breath. “Sometimes people say you should live every day as if it’s your last. Well, I don’t think that’s practical—you might live for another fifty years, and it’s going to get complicated really fast if you never wash the kitchen floor or pay your taxes or eat salad. Not to mention sticky.” She looked around at the sea of faces. People were smiling, dabbing at their eyes. She took another breath. “I want to share something I’ve learned from Polly—who taught me, through her dying, how to live. I think we should all live as if we are dying, too—because we are, make no mistake. We should live as if we’re dying at some unspecified but possibly quite soon time. We can’t expect every day to be happy, and there’ll always be sickness and heartache and sadness, but we should never put up with a sad or a boring or a depressing day just for the sake of it. None of us have time for that, whether we have a hundred days left or a hundred thousand.”
Annie looked down at her scrawled index cards, suddenly overwhelmed by it. At having to sum up all the things she felt right now. To speak for her friend, so colorful and alive, when all Annie had ever been was drab. Damn you, Polly. What a thing to ask. She always asked too much. “Um...” In the crowd, she caught sight of Dr. Max, in his suit and tie, a horrible shade of tangerine. He wasn’t crying. He must have patients die on him all the time. Occupational hazard. “Um, that’s all, really. I just want to say that I only knew Polly a short time, but she changed my life, and I won’t ever be the same again. And I miss her. I will miss her so much. That’s all.”
Annie stepped down, staring at her silver shoes, aware of clapping above her head, like the roar of a plane, the chatter of birds. People were reaching out to her, hands on her arms, patting her and whispering words of comfort.