Should I value my life if no one else does? It is a lonely question. A question I have returned to repeatedly, as I, for example, severed ties with my family of origin, severed ties with my workplace of two decades, continue to sever ties with people and with institutions who were supposed to value my life but clearly do not. It is lonely, carrying my life and its value in my arms, like a herder with a single sheep.

I’ve waited my whole life to give someone a good death. Presence grows out of absence. As I lay dying as a teenager, my family reacted like marionettes with their strings cut. I was dying but I was much more alive than the stiffs who surrounded me, people who loved me but who could not act on their love. So it is with a fierce energy, a tremendous passion, that I approach the sickness and death of others. What I was not given, I give in spades. I have the words, the actions,