Six Letter Word [Kaylor]

Epilogue

Hey guys! So, it's been a while since these journals were originally edited and published. I never imagined so many of you would want to read them. And since they've decided to bring them back out again, I thought I'd give you guys a couple of little updates to tell you what happened after, when treatment ended and remission started. You know some of this. You watched it unfold. But now you get to see it through my eyes. Thank you again for coming on this journey. YOU are the reason I fought so hard.

February 2018

I couldn't remember having ever been this nervous before a show. I mean, I was sure I had been, when I was sixteen, seventeen. I'd had my share of unfortunate appearances on awards shows like this one. And this time, I could count on my fingers the number of people who even knew I was there. I wiped my sweaty hands on my dress and tossed a grin to my best friend who was carefully smoothing his ginger hair as three different guys tried to thread his in-ears through his tux. I carefully stowed my hearing aids where I knew I could retrieve them and put in my new in-ears, making sure to flip the switch on the pack so I could hear the ambient noise in the room. We'd rehearsed this in secret at about four in the morning, with only the sound guys and the rest of the band, playing to the empty space. And I'd been brought in tonight through a back door, head down, hood up, trying my best to blend into the scenery. Part of the fun was the element of surprise.

I tried so hard not to run my hand nervously through my pixie length hair. It looked really good, given there weren't a lot of different options for styling. I was just stoked to have my own hair to show off. It had taken much longer than anticipated to grow back, but there was finally enough of it to make an actual style. It was almost time to head to the stage, and I guess Ed could see I was nervous because he came over and gave me a hug. "You're gonna kill it, Tay. Also, Karlie told me to give you this." He placed a kiss on the back of my right shoulder, where three butterflies bearing the teal, pink and blue of the thyroid cancer ribbon served as a permanent reminder of what I'd been through and the fact that I'd had my Karlie and her adorable little tattoos by my side the whole way. As it was, I knew she was quietly making her way into the seats, trying her best not to be noticed. There was no earthly reason for her to be there without me, and she didn't want to give it away, but she also didn't want to miss this. My family was watching on TV from only a few miles away, they wanted to be there, but they knew it was going to be hard enough for Karlie not to alert the entire crowd to my presence, never mind my parents and brother as well.

He put on his guitar and they handed me mine and then it was time. For the first bit of the song I would be behind a screen with the rest of the band, playing the electric guitar. They would split the screen down the middle, revealing us behind it at the moment my vocal part began, and I just hoped I could get through the song. We'd written it last April, the first full song I wrote for the new album that no one even knew was coming. It had been more than six months since I heard Dr. Miller speak the words 'you're in remission,' I was continuing to get stronger, and I was confident that in a little under a year, I would be ready to tour. Tonight was just the initial step to letting the fans know it was coming, and that was totally thrilling.

"Mrs. Swift-Kloss?" A tech led me to my spot on the stage, and although I'd done this a ton of times before, I'd never had one break out of 'mission mode' to talk to me, but he told me how happy he was to see me back. I set my mic into the stand and made sure it was positioned, double checked the settings on my guitar, then flipped the switch to get the monitor channel in my in-ears and took a deep breath as I heard them announce "Ladies and gentlemen, Ed Sheeran." The staging was simple, designed to let us layer in the instruments the way we had that first time, when we wrote it. Ed would stand center stage with the acoustic, the rest of us were behind him, and hidden by a screen. But as each instrument layered in, a light behind us would project our silhouettes onto the screen so they could see each of us, but not who was playing. First Ed on acoustic, then the bit I'd started and looped on piano, then a looping percussion line, then me on electric guitar.