The Last Day of Chemo

My friend Cressida finished her last round of chemotherapy on a Friday in March.

She had been in treatment for eight months. The kind of treatment that reorganizes your entire life around appointments and side effects and the specific calendar of when you feel well enough to do something and when you do not. She had kept working through most of it, quietly, without making it the center of every conversation, because that was who she was. She mentioned it matter-of-factly and then talked about other things.

I had been showing up in whatever ways I could through the eight months. Dropping things off. Sitting with her when she wanted company and not showing up when she did not. Texting when she was too tired to talk.

The last infusion was a Friday. She rang the bell they have at the cancer center, the one you ring when you finish treatment, and her sister sent me a video of it.

She looked exhausted and lit up at the same time.

I thought for a long time about what to give her.

Not cancer things. Not awareness ribbons or survivor gear. Not anything that identified her primarily as a person who had been sick. That is not who she was and she would not want to be that on a shelf in her house.

She had been talking, for the last few months, about a trip she wanted to take when she was better. A specific place. A coastal town in Italy she had read about in a novel years ago and always meant to get to. She had a photo of it saved on her phone. She had shown it to me once, the harbor, the light on the water, and said: one day.

I found a photographer who had printed a series of that specific coast. Small editions. Framed well. I ordered the one that most looked like the photo she had saved.

On the back of the frame I had a small plate attached: For Cressida. One day is coming.

She texted me a photo of it on her wall that evening.

She said: I look at it every day. It keeps the direction right.

The treatment was one thing. The after is another. The gift should point toward the after.