"Something's Wrong"I relapsed and got sick again with my cancer. This time it has metastasized to different parts on my body. I know that I won't survive and it hurts to tell Hazel but I know that I will have to tell her eventually. When the time came to tell her, she was devastated but I promised to keep fighting.
Isaac and Hazel made a pre-funeral by my request. They each gave speeches and it was a pretty hard time but it's good to know how the people I'm close to, feel. All I can say is that it's tough and I can't keep on fighting.
Character: Hazel Grace
Augustus died eight days after his pre-funeral. It's unbearable to loose someone you love. I only think about him lately. Every second is worse than the other because I know that he won't come back. It's a roller coaster of emotions and I'm sad and I'm angry at the universe. I may seem sad at everyone but I'm not, just the way life works.
I went to Augustus' funeral and it was depressing as heck. I couldn't feel anything but when I'm alone all I do is cry. Seeing Gus' still body in the coffin broke my heart and I didn't know how to react. I didn't react. Gus' mom came up to me and she told me that Augustus loved me. So
Awhile after I went to visit Isaac and see how he was doing. Isaac was angrily playing his video games and I don't blame him. Gus was his best friend and Isaac's outlet would be video games.
"Gus really loved you, you know?" he said. I told him that I knew that and continued saying that until he asked me something that got my attention.
"Did he ever give you that thing he was writing?" he asked. Clueless, I asked him what he was talking about. Apparently, Gus was writing a sequel of An Imperial Affliction for me but never showed me because he thought that he wasn't that good of a writer.
I called Augustus' parents and visited them asking if they knew where I could possibly find this writing. They didn't know so I emailed Peter Van Houten's secretary. She knew where it was because it was a letter written to van Houten. It read:
"Van Houten,
I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time—and from what I saw, you have plenty—I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.
Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.
I want to leave a mark.
But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
(Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.)
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless—epically useless in my current state—but I am an animal like any other.
Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.
People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.
The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.
After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die before I could tell her that I was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse.
What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
I do, Augustus.
I do.*
*(*actual ending)
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