The Scars of Our Faults: An Epilogue to John Green's The Fault in Our Stars

I left 8 days after my funeral. My real funeral, my prefuneral. Right before I was taken, I was preparing for Chemotherapy. The doctors thought that even though Chemotherapy wasn’t the answer to my osteosarcoma before my amputation, Hey, maybe it’ll work this time. The moment I died was the moment I least expected to die. Those last moments before falling to unconsciousness gave me a rush of hope, a rush of something even more powerful than adrenaline. I remember being too weak to even hold up an unlit cigarette but thinking to myself I’ll get better, I’ll get better, I’ll get better.  I didn't, though. My faith was misplaced once again. Van Houten was right, he had always been. Hazel Grace knew he was right; I just didn’t want to believe it. You die in the middle of your life: the theme perfectly manifested in An Imperial Affliction.

Van Houten and I corresponded for a bit after our disheartening encounter in Amsterdam. I wrote him an angry letter, compelling him to apologize to Hazel Grace for the way he treated her: the way he had been menacingly candor. When he wrote back, he wasn't pleased with me, either. I could tell he was drunk when he wrote it, his handwriting was sloppy and I could hear him say every slurred word in the back of my head. He called me immature and "unprepared for the forthcoming afflictions of the world".

It was around his 3rd or 4th letter when he knew I was dying. I never directly told him, but he somehow knew. That was when he told me about his daughter; she died of cancer, aged eight. I told him I was sorry she died and he told me he was sorry I was dying.

I received that last letter the day before my prefuneral.

A couple of days after that, I knew I would be leaving very soon. My whole body was dominantly vulnerable; no one needed to tell me because I knew the cancer was winning. And that was when I decided to send my eulogy, these crumpled up pieces of paper I tore off my spiral notebook talking about Hazel Grace and what I’d say (even though I knew I wouldn’t live to that day) at her funeral, to Van Houten. A part of me that can remain when I die. I just asked the old man to try and make it a coherent whole and appropriate for her funeral when her day comes. Just a little favor he could do for me.

I never got to read his reply. I don't even know if he ever got to read what I wrote. Knowing that mail from America to Amsterdam takes a week or so, I probably would have already died by the time it entered the Netherlands.

Funny thing is, I find myself pondering about him and his daughter in the most random moments of afterlife.

But then thinking about Van Houten makes me think about Hazel Grace, the star-crossed love of my life. And afterlife, still. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that I still love her with my whole heart. And I wish I could tell her one last time.

I also find myself worrying, worrying that what if afterlife is just for people who believe in the idea of Capital-S something? What will happen to Hazel Grace then? What’s happening to her now? Did she change when I died? Did she cry? How did mom and dad tell her about the news? Did her "lungs that suck at being lungs" fall apart?

Yes, I know it’s cruel and narcissistic to want someone to miss you when you’re gone, but isn’t that what everyone wants? We want to minimize the scars we’ll leave while we’re alive (like Hazel Grace), but when we die, we’ll want to have done something that changed the course of everything, whether it be the heart of one or a million, we’ll want to have someone to wish you were there with them instead of rotting six feet beneath their shoes. We’ll want to have someone cry their eyes out knowing that we won’t see them the next day, or the day after that or ever. And that’s the question I will leave for myself. Sure, I may have thought it was the best choice back when I was alive but, really, my choice…the choice of leaving scars…Was it really the right choice?