“Are you and Mommy sleeping in the house tonight?”
“Of course, beautiful. We sleep here every night,” I said.
Jack paused. “Why are you sleeping downstairs, Daddy? Why aren’t you sleeping in Mommy’s bed?”
Anna and I exchanged a guilty glance. “Oh, Daddy’s not sleeping so well and I don’t want to disturb Mommy,” I said, and it was only half the truth.
Jack thought about what I had said. “Even when I’m asleep, will you both be here in the house?”
“Of course we will,” Anna said. “We’ll always be here, so if you need anything, you just shout and we’ll come, okay?”
“And if I go out of the house, will you come with me?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “We’ll always be with you.”
“Even if I go to the North Pole to see Father Christmas.”
“Yes,” I said, tucking the cover under his body, making sure his legs weren’t exposed. “It would be fun going to the North Pole. Although we’d have to wrap up warm.”
“Snug as a bug in a rug,” Jack said, almost to himself.
“Snug as a bug in a rug,” I repeated.
Jack smiled and snuggled into his pillows. I thought he was dropping off to sleep, but he spoke again, his little voice clear and precise. “When we die, where do we go?”
He said it in a very matter-of-fact way, and I didn’t know if he was talking generally or if he was asking about his own fate.
Anna and I looked at each other in the dim half-light. Did Jack know that he was going to die? It was a question I asked myself a thousand times a day. Did he twig when Spider-Man came to visit or when he received the batch of handmade cards from his classmates in room 1A?
We had read the fact sheets about how to talk to your dying child. We had spoken to Dr. Flanagan and a counselor attached to the Harley Street clinic. Jack was at a difficult age, they said, on a cusp. While he would hold certain notions about death, his conceptual understanding would be primitive and undeveloped. So do what feels right, they said, as if we were deciding whether or not to co-sleep.
We just didn’t know. How could we possibly know?
“Well,” Anna said brightly, and I realized then she had prepared for the question, that she knew exactly what to say. “When we die we go to heaven.”
“What’s heaven like?” Jack said.
“Heaven,” Anna said, “is the happiest place in the world where you have all your friends and family and you can play and do whatever you want.”
Jack smiled. “Will they have PlayStation?”
“Of course,” she said cheerily. “They’ll have PlayStation and all your favorite toys and all your favorite food.”
“Will they have McDonald’s?”
Anna laughed. “They’ll definitely have McDonald’s.”
Jack grinned, but then his face turned serious. “And will you and Daddy be there, as well?”
“Of course we will,” I said, trying to follow Anna’s upbeat lead. I reached across the bed and held Anna’s hand, our bodies creating a little cocoon. “We’ll always be with you, so you’ll never be alone.”
Jack nodded solemnly.
“But remember, trouble, we’ll be watching you,” I added, softly flicking his ear and tucking the cover under him. “Making sure you do your homework, that you’re not eating too many hamburgers.”
Jack giggled. “I’m going to eat a million hamburgers.”
“A million?”
“Really,” he said, nodding proudly. He was getting tired now, his eyes beginning to flutter. “Daddy,” Jack said, sitting up again on his pillows.
“Yes, beautiful?”
“You know we talked about treats?”
“Yes.”
We had asked Jack whether there was anything special he wanted to do. His answers were always modest. No Disneyland to see Mickey Mouse; no trip to Peppa Pig World or Buckingham Palace to see the queen. No, he was adamant. He just wanted to go to McDonald’s for ice cream.
“Can we do another thing, as well?”
“We can do whatever you want, Jack, whatever you want.”
“Can we go up the London Eye again? I want to go right to the top.”
Subject: Re: Jack
Sent: Wed Dec 24, 2014 3:33 am
From: Rob
To: Nev
Dear Nev,
I wrote to you before but haven’t heard back from you, so I hope everything is okay. As I told you, we stopped treatments at Dr. Sladkovsky’s clinic, despite the visible signs of improvement Jack was making. As soon as we got back to London and Jack went back on chemo, he started declining again.
I am still trying to come to terms with everything that has happened. There is nothing left now. No hope. I wish I could say that I don’t blame Anna but part of me does. He was getting better, I could see it with my own eyes. That is a horrible thing to think about the person you love, but it is the truth.
We don’t really speak about it—Jack dying that is. We don’t speak about anything anymore. We just pretend it’s not happening. I still can’t believe it has come to this. I can’t believe I will soon lose my little boy.
I hope you and Josh are well.
Rob
Bundled up against the cold, we lifted and positioned Jack’s wheelchair at the edge of the cabin and then began our slow ascent up into the twilight. As soon as we rose above the Thames, the city lights glistening on the water, Jack took his camera out and started to take photos.
We climbed. I pointed out to Anna, because Jack already knew it all, the Hungerford Bridge and the South Bank Centre, which from above looked like a soulless cluster of gray chimneys. On the other bank, the wings of the air force memorial twinkled in the sun, guarding Whitehall and the Ministry of Defence. As we rose farther, we could see St. James’s, Green, and then Hyde Parks, a fat royal leg stretched out across London.
It was Scott who sorted it all out. After Jack had made his request, I called the London Eye’s bookings line. It wasn’t open on Christmas Day and the day
