My First Will

That night, that first night, music wrapped around my ears and a needle in my wrist and water at the edges of my eyes, I let my imagination carry me back home. I wore pajamas provided by the hospital. I had to lay flat on my back, resting on a book in the small of my back to keep pressure on the site of the bone marrow aspirate. One of the sisters would come in periodically and replace the bloody bandage, check my temperature, ask if I needed anything.

"No, no," I would shake my head. "No, thank you."

Fingers pressed against closed eyes -- thumb to the right, forefinger to the left. Push out, then back in, pinching the bridge of my nose. Slide down. Wipe the moisture on the bed sheets. Lower the volume on my Walkman.

What did I have?

It was a simple matter. It was practical. I didn't know what I didn't know -- hell, my first comic-book inspired vision of what a bone marrow transplant might look like involved a full skeletal replacement, and I was halfway hoping they had some adamantium lying around.

So when the doctors and the sisters and the visitors had left and it was just me and my blood and a handful of tapes I'd been listening to for six months, I got to thinking about what I had. My mix tapes -- with sides titled f***in' A! and Bee-Yootiful! -- songs that had been mapped out for consistency and style and transitions between artists, tempo, variety, well, I wouldn't want them to just get tossed in the trash after I died.

Would my sister appreciate them most? Or Aaron? Brady? It would probably be best if I decided on a fair balance, some tapes for each.

But then what about my books? Nintendo? My leather jacket? My Lynda Barry jacket, autographed at a writer's conference from my senior year in high school, tattered and faded but still important?

Or is it best, when making out a will in your head, to first identify the people you want to give things to, and then the stuff? I'd never done this before. I didn't want to figure out what to do what little shoot I'd managed to accumulate over twenty years, but I couldn't stop. Sometimes I would try to stop, covering my face with both hands.

But then thinking of somebody else's face brought more memories, and every piece of crap I imagined in my bedroom back in Renton, or my dorm room up the hill did the same.

I don't know when I finally fell asleep that night, but the will never left my head. It never became permanent. I never wrote it down, black ink, white paper. By the time morning rolled around -- Mom arriving sometime later in the afternoon after an unbelievably hurried flight across the ocean -- it didn't seem like something I needed to worry about anymore. I didn't know what was going to happen, didn't know what to expect. Without giving it another thought, I think I knew that a will was looking backwards (an attempt to itemize my past) when what I needed more than anything was to focus on the future.