Story Thirty-Nine
This time, it’s for Linda.
Getting ready to die is just as dramatic as it seems in the movies. There’s a lot of opera in the background while you try to take care of the paperwork, of the last details, of the tiny things that you’ve left to the last minute, the things only you can take care of but that would be a burden if you left them behind.
And at the same time, none of it matters. Why bother paying a bill or sweeping a floor or leaving a note? It’s not for your own sake. It’s for everyone else, so they know you loved them best as you could. That, in the actual factual end, is all that matters.
I know that I’m lucky to have been diagnosed early, so that I have time to write another book or at least put all my journals in one place so that if I go sooner than we think I will, someone will be able to read them all and pull out enough words to publish on my behalf. But I don’t feel lucky, or unlucky. I feel like the sweeping notes in the Flower Song, the Nessun Dorma, anything that Vivaldi ever wrote. I feel nothing but joy and peace and pain and fear, all of it all at once so that it bleeds into itself and can only be described as emotion raw and pure and beautiful and perfect, and also fleeting.
The only thing that matters to me lately is the moment that I’m inhabiting, the endless thirsty need to feel for as long as I can. That is death, that is knowing that your time is truly limited instead of the dull knowledge that we all die some time. You feel it coming, when you’re lucky enough to have time to fix your affairs. You start to think about your decline and how much you’ve lost since yesterday, how many minutes you wasted with silly bullshit and not truly living because when you have a finite amount of life left there’s no reason to worry about the bills.
E che sospiri, la liberta.
Editor’s note: Most of the job here at Bootstrap Industries is to keep people alive through the hardest days of their lives. Familial abuse, domestic violence, rape, doxxing and queer-based assault fill our days. We keep our people alive until they can remember that life is more than cortisol overload and panic attacks, poverty trauma and mental anguish.
Settling in to a months-long surrender to an inevitable death isn’t really our style, at all.
Tirado started fundraising years ago in a Chicago winter to get handwarmers, food, and blankets to an unhoused community she stumbled into while drunk. It’s been a wild ride since then— sometimes on the rail and sometimes so off the rails, no one would believe one of us was sober at the time.
She’s never asked for herself. Never had to, she’s a lesbian from the mountains, my good bitch is always prepared.
However, she is dying. Slowly, painfully, and with none of the dignity she’s earned and all of the TBI-induced dementia that’s stealing her limited time left with her kids.
Palliative hospice care is fucking expensive.
So, I’m asking. I’m asking for Tirado and her kids and her family.
This time, it’s for Linda.
Y’all know what to do.
Venmo: Linda-Tirado-3
PayPal: Bootstrapindustries@gmail
Zelle: 806.433.6075
Cat Tax:
I've been distracted for some time by my own ex-partner dying-of-dementia drama, so this was a bit of a shock. Is the TBI from getting shot in the face? Linda is so smart and so fierce that dementia is hard to imagine in her. It is tragic, honestly, because we need lots more real ones like Linda in the world rather than fewer. She has probably had an effect on way more people than she could possibly imagine because of her writing and her accuracy in calling out bullshit. This hurts my heart, even in the midst of my own grief.
Dammit, Linda, we're gonna miss you (all of us anonymous internet randos). I'm way below the poverty line, so all I can do is a very small, token donation.
Oh, SHIT, this sucks, is all I can say.
Thank you for the links, but more importantly -- thank you, Linda, for the example you set.