girl drew

On my birthday in 2013,  Ramón and I went to a place where we drank wine and painted. For the next several years, Ramón insisted that his painting was better than mine, despite the fact that I’ve never seen a hibiscus with roaches for leaves. We kept them on display (Don’t ask why.) and requested opinions when people came over. I asked simply and directly, whereas Ramón would phrase it more like this: “Which of these do you like better? The one on the right that’s kind of bland — or the one on the left that has more personality and creativity?” One day, when we were getting ready to move from that condo, I came home and Ramón asked me if I noticed anything, gesturing toward the paintings. His was missing, so I asked what happened. He told me that a guy who came by to do some work (which did in fact happen)  complimented them. Though I wasn’t there to witness it, Ramón claimed that he wanted to buy one. The guy chose his painting and insisted on paying him five dollars, at whic...

This day last year, Ramón walked out of our house for the last time. In the days leading up to his transplant admission, he spent more time than usual loving on the dogs. He assured them how much he loved them and said what I deemed – even at the time – to be his final goodbyes. It was wearing on me because I didn’t want to think about Ramón’s mortality; I'd already spent more than my fair share of time thinking about death. Also, after all that I’d learned about acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the cancer itself wasn’t really something to take his life out of nowhere. Instead, in Ramón’s case, maybe in the months or years [or decades] after his transplant, we’d learn that the cancer had recurred, at which point we’d try more treatment options. On one of our many hospital walks during the previous admission, Ramón asked me what actually caused people with AML to die. From what I’d read, the most frequent cause was infection and the body’s inability to fight it due to lack of immune sy...