Lisa had never heard of the word “Mesothelioma” until this morning and if only she could have the chance, she would never want to know what the word meant or what it’s capable of doing. But she never had a choice… Life told her that it’s the kind of cancer that would slowly kill her for the next moments of her life—no—it already started its conquest to her grave.
She was inside her small room, staring at her reflection in the mirror, her memories wandering to the kind of life she lived for the past thirty years… trying to make herself believe that she lived life to its fullest.
But the mere sight of her welling eyes was enough to tell the world her regrets. She never lived life even to the half extent of its being fullest. She was born to a carpenter father. Her mother died right after her birth. When she was seven, she decided to follow her father’s steps so she started holding a hammer, going from places to places to build houses. Ironically though, she never had her own house.
The doctor said she was overly exposed to asbestos—the reason why she caught her disease. But it was what kept her alive for over half of her life. The way it helped cements be made was like the way it fed her for so many years.
As a teen-ager, the club called “Heavenly Pleasures” near their street had been her home before her father died when she was nineteen. The place was expensive for a poor carpenter like her but the thought that she could afford to buy beer and pay for a manwhore was her ecstasy. Now that she’s thirty, she felt so silly for entering a place that was meant for men and for paying men just to have ‘heavenly pleasures’ when she could get one even for free.
When her father died, her life got worse. Worse enough for her to decipher the clandestine meaning of ‘Jane’ and ‘Stone’ until that day came. The day an unknown manwhore had her belly grow in an unusual way.
The day she learned about what’s happening inside her stomach, her life went upside down. She asked herself if she could raise it or if she could ever let it live the way she did. And four months before it could get even a glimpse of world, Lisa found herself bleeding in between her legs, her right hand holding a bottle used for getting away of an unborn angel.
She ran her fingers on her stomach when she remembered that dreadful day. Her life had never been at peace since then. She made beer her water.Jane her food. Stone her daily meal. When she was twenty-eight, she learned that she had ovarian cancer. And now she’s thirty, she had mesothelioma.
She was never afraid to die because long before she learned ABCs, she had already been looking forward for the day she’d meet her final destiny. But that morning, after learning that she only had a year to live, she realized that she wanted to do a thing: she wanted to be a mother even just for a year.
She was eaten by guilt. She believed that the reason why she was sick was because she once killed an innocent angel. And now she wanted to see one living.
So she went to an orphanage and begged for a child but they refused to grant her request for she was a lady of thin body, pale lips and skin, and swollen eyes. She tried her best not to look like such, though, but her make up couldn’t hide her real self anymore. She was also coughing every now and then—the reason why she was only talked to by the guards outside.
Feeling miserable, she went back home, looked at the mirror again, let her hands hold her face, and allowed streams of water fall down her cheeks.
She was compelling herself from coughing but she continued on. She wanted not to breathe hard but she couldn’t help it. And she knew that each moment of her life, she was breathing her last.
She felt badly sorry for the people who died because of her: her mother who died after she was born, and her own baby who died before it was born.
She then ran her hands on her face, uttering slowly that she was sorry because from the moment she learned about the cruelties of life, she started to let herself be consumed by misery. She cried… not because of the thought that she might die any moment but because of the thought that she never allowed herself to live a happy life. That she killed herself for thirty years.
That is why, in between her tears, she decided that for the remaining days given to her, she would try to live with smile. She might not be able to have a child but she would find ways to give alms to the poor. She might not have had a good one but she wanted to tell others her life to be a testimony of the kind of life that the kids should never have. She wanted to do things that would make her say that even for her last days on earth, she was able to live life to its fullest. But for her to be able to do these, she wanted—needed—just one more breath to live.
