Ugly Like Me...

Emily Hayward passes from cancer at 25 years young, a hero to thousands.

Emily Hayward, the effervescent lover of working out, all things healthy, pretty hotels that stash cameras everywhere for visitors to take pictures and, most importantly, her wife Aisha Hayward-Hasan has passed away from an 8 year-battle with malignant melanoma. 

As someone with my own chronic illness, I found myself taken with Emily's journey on Youtube maybe six months ago. I wasn't the only one; she left behind over 50,000 subscribers. It seemed like every one of us noticed she hadn't vlogged in four days. We saw her eyes change, like a part of her was in the next world, a part here. Our eternal hero was MIA.

We wrote well-wishes and prayers on her newsfeed.

It wasn't until yesterday, when I opened Instagram, sitting on my porch, ten minutes from New York City, and a world away from Bromley, UK where she resided with her wife that I saw this:

What’s going on guys? After 8 long years of kicking cancer in the ass my body got tired, I achieved everything I wanted to and more. With all my loved ones around me I have now peacefully left you all. Thank you all for your love and support, but most of all thank you for always following my journey and believing in me. Love you all, peace Em x

I saw her leaving. As someone who's been dealing with illness for almost a decade, I feel like I witnessed the moment her spirit left her eyes, as her partner tried to talk her back and keep her here.

Even so, I was not ready for her to leave just yesterday. I sat on my porch and cried my eyes out. Another hero has exited this world. We will see her again.

I always note to my husband how I dislike it when people say, "She/he is gonna beat this! They're a fighter!" For me, it implies that all the little lights I loved that passed via cancer were not fighters. That's just wrong. Inaccurate.

Emily Hayward was a fighter, and so much more. She was a fighter, lover of so many things...she taught those of us who know we are dying a bit sooner than the rest, how to live despite that knowledge. She was a fighter and she's changed this world. I know she's changed mine.

Last night I stared at the moon, thinking this was the first moon I was aware of that she wasn't here to see. I was so in touch with that moon, with Aisha who was inexhaustible in her love for Em and her unwavering positivity, with her parents. I wanted to thank them for sharing her with us, with helping her help us, for everything.

Emily Hayward did not succumb to cancer. Cancer did not beat her. She accomplished her Divine Appointment, she fought like hell to get there, and went when she had accomplished all she needed to accomplish.

She won, and I am grateful. 

 

The Soldier

Twenty three years he spent

with sand in his mouth,

connecting in ditches, connected to bodies

trying to separate them from their humanity.

Almost dangerously close to the way

the enemy did.

 

He could only get close in pieces.

He had to separate, in order to live.

 

It was up to him, or them.

He couldn’t survive any more connections.

Each connection was a loss.

Hit.

Torn away

Limb from limb

So he tried to shut his mouth.

His heart.

 

Take the hit, in a silent way,

for the brother he could only love

On another day.

Twenty-three years away.

 

I’ll see you again someday

He'd think, as he looked at his feat.

The war defeated him in many ways.

 

Imagining his comrade as a child

AT the kite festival he grew up

 going to as a kid

Slivers of glass on his skin

Wounded in an innocent way,

Expert gauger of the wind

Like him.

 

They could be brothers then.

Only then.

Back home.

 

That was the highest he’s ever felt,

 And yet he was the master of it,

Not the part that could fly.

Ironic.

It was the first time he realized something in him

  Could be religious.

He might.

Ride the wind or clouds

Take to the light and heaven.

Someday.

 

But now it was about silo missile doors

And unstable floors

Heat and pain.

In a place that was always in desperate need of rain.

 

He’d find himself behind

Mounds of destruction that would

now serve to protect him.

Praying.

Head down.

Religion or fright.

Maybe just a kite.

Whatever kept him alive.

For a stranger.

 

Twenty-three years later.

Home. It felt solid.

This time for good.

 

He came home and everything had changed.

It was too much like that place, he was trying to leave.

A sense of heat and hate, a burning that lingered in the air.

He felt everywhere.

Even in the field, down by the river

Where the kites would frighten the clouds,

Lighting up the cityscape in the dimmed down

 Background.

 

These days, he could fly anything there,

It was never quite as colorful and loud,

As that heat in the wind.

It would never be anything that made

any sense to him.

 

He was aware now why his father drank.

He could see himself from his father’s angle

With the bottle, ice cold. Thick glass.

Never willing him to do or say anything that resembled

KIND.

 

He resisted.

He wouldn’t go down that road.

He picked up kinder vices, in the meantime.

To fill up his idea of this empty home.

 

He walked a lot.

He thought it was respectful.

A subtle nod to his comrades who could no longer.

Until he was able to hug his brother.

 

He continued to shave his head as well.

These little rituals willed him to keep going

in a world he no longer understood,

Stronger.

 

He’d done his time. He wanted his home back.

He wanted his kite. His brother. And Freedom.

 

He’d walk and ride the train.

Up and down again.

Still praying for rain.

A habit he never spent.

So much more to give.

More, more.more

Never enough.

 

Rain.

Cleansing.

Satiating.

Thirst.

 

Riding the train, the hate monger lingered.

Up and down the narrow width of the 25th.

Underground. Train.

“Trump has made America great again.”

The monster of a man, in sheer size alone,

 Screams.

He tries to close his eyes. See the blue.

His white water rafting with his Sister.

Aurora.

In Portland.

 

He can remember the name

of the place

The river

The streams.

 

And out comes the knife.

He could smell the metal a mile

 Away.

It followed him from a place far away

 he was supposed to be leaving

For the brothers he never got a chance to have,

 and for the strangers’ freedom.

 

The tongue was pointed toward a young women

In a hijab.

It’s okay

She’s was increasingly more fidgety.

Scared.

He found himself tasting sand, wishing he didn’t care.

He stood up.

Then two.

Then three.

 

Protecting the girl in the hijab and the man’s right to hate her. He thought this was just speech. But thoughts provoke speech and actions. Hurtful words, turn to hurtful action.

 

The knife turned from her, and stabbed him.

First one.

Then two.

Then three.

 

He couldn’t see, or swallow.

Fell buy the monster’s boot, the movement of the train

 Shifted him on the side, underneath a seat.

 

The three.

On this eve,

Of Memorial Day Weekend?

This was how his service would end.

He smiled. Felt lighter. Tasted no sand.

Just the red warmth that pumped out of him,

Beneath him.

The irony, he thought,

To die at home for her, and him, at home

Between them.

 

His soul was lifted, celebrated.

The lights embraced him like a long applause.

He didn’t need to be lauded, he felt his brother’s

Shoulders squeezing him. 

It was heaven.

All the pain and suffering bled out onto floor.

 

No longer between them.

He was finally home.

He did it.

Freedom.