Christopher Ghattas is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2025 Essay/Memoir Contest
Whenever someone tells me that they, too, are dying, my advice is always the same: keep it to yourself. I don’t mean dying with urgency. In the case of a blocked windpipe, or when a foreign object has infiltrated a major artery, I say go ahead and call someone. I’m talking about the slow kind of dying, from this or from that; any number of genetic disorders or acquired diseases qualify, and no one culprit is more special than any other. And since dying of one thing is equal to dying from anything, there’s really no need to share the news.
One problem is, the first thing people want to know is the last thing any dying person wants to discuss.
“How long do you have?” they always ask.
Personally, I wouldn’t ask the closest of friends about the shelf life of their current milk carton, much less something so personal as their own expiration date. The milk is going to spoil at some point in the near future is all anyone should expect to know. Should I not receive the same courtesy offered to coffee creamer?
It’s not their fault, the nosy—“curious” is the kinder way of saying the same thing. The curious have been taught that, upon hearing news, it’s fine to ask questions. Most typically, they want to know when. When is the wedding? When is the baby coming? When are you dying? No one ever sits a person down to teach them the distinction between proper responses to good news and bad. Simply put, only one type welcomes questions. As for the other, offer prayers and condolences, say you are sorry as if it’s somehow your fault, but for God’s sake, do not ask for details.
I used to be nosy. Before I knew better, I asked the same question everyone has asked me since. It was on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday in late winter that I sat with my neurosurgeon in a small, dimly lit room as he read from an open manila folder. He pushed his hand over the remaining wisps of hair atop his glistening head and, after fidgeting a moment or two, explained that the tumor in my brainstem was both malignant and inoperable.
“How long?” I asked.
“Well, I hate to put limits on this kind of thing,” he said, “but not decades, I’ll tell you that.” He checked his watch, excused himself, and left the room. A nurse returned minutes later and explained that the doctor had a personal matter to attend to. “He’s gone for the day,” she said. It just goes to illustrate that people do not care to receive follow-up questions to their bad news.
Another problem with imminent death as common knowledge is that people are always checking in, but not like they used to. It used to happen that some friend might call after an extended pause in our friendship and, when I allowed their call to go to voicemail, they would say, “Just thinking about you—wanted to see how things are going.” Now, the calls come in weekly, but these people still talk as if we haven’t spoken in years. “Saw a silly cloud that reminded me of you. Are you doing okay these days?”
Parents are worse. My father calls me, at minimum, once per day. He always has the same panic in his voice. “How is it today? Any change?” My father is convinced that if there is even the slightest growth of the tumor, I will feel it. Of course, I have explained that there are no nerve endings in the brain, but he won’t hear it. “You’ll know,” he says.
During treatment, I vomited for a few hours one morning and then debated whether to smoke a joint or swill NyQuil from the bottle. In the end, indecisiveness got the better of me. I did both and promptly fell asleep. No more than an hour or two later, my phone showed sixteen missed calls from my father, though what awakened me was his fists pounding on the front door.
“I was about to call the paramedics,” he said, rushing in as soon as the deadbolt was unlocked.
Once he could verify that I hadn’t given up the ghost, he became manic and elated. He wanted nothing more than to take a picture together. That’s another thing about sharing grim prognoses: everyone suddenly wants to take pictures. I could be tired, sick, stoned— doesn’t matter. People want photos to immortalize moments with those whose mortality has been made perfectly apparent.
“Let’s take a picture, how about it?” my father asked.
When I shook my head, he said, “You look good, son. You look resolute. Plus, I’m having a good hair day. Where’s your camera?”
I struggled to envision a resolute person, partly because I was still stoned, and in part because I had not managed to digest a meal in days. My mental faculties compromised as they were, I could find no argument that would dissuade my father from taking a photo with me. As I was turning on the timer of the camera, he said from somewhere behind me, “Maybe you should shower first—look fresh.”
My father cannot help but react candidly to the physical appearance of others. To combat the inflammation in my brain, I was initially prescribed steroids, the most apparent effect of which was a ballooning of my face and neck. During that time, I went to meet my father for lunch at his house. He came outside to meet me, recoiled his head like a cobra, and asked, “God almighty, that’s not permanent, is it?”
This type of honesty can be refreshing. It’s nice to know how your looks are faring in troubled times, and friends are of no use in that regard—yet another reason to die privately. All that friends have to offer are compliments. Not that they aren’t well intentioned, but if there is a person who looks better balding and emaciated, I haven’t met them. Over the course of treatment, I lost twenty-three pounds from my already-scrawny frame. Still, friends would come to visit and say things like, “Oh my God, you look vibrant.” After losing large chunks of hair, my closest friend looked upon my scalp and said, without a trace of irony, “I wish my hair looked that good.”
It must be like this for celebrities and sitting presidents. Everything I do is grand—something to be celebrated. During a trek through Edinburgh last year, I spotted an expensive, cashmere flat cap that I was nearly certain made me look dashing. To snuff out the small traces of nagging doubt, I video conferenced with a friend back home to get her input. By the end of the call, she and her husband were chanting, “Cap! Cap! Cap! Cap!” I walked out of that dimly lit shop feeling like an authentic Scottish rogue, but in the honest, unforgiving light of the train station bathroom, I saw the truth.
The problem is, life needs guard rails, and I no longer have any. Can I trust friends and family? Can I believe that every outfit I assemble is “a ten,” or that my eggs really are “unlike any eggs ever scrambled”? I have to know that if I choose a coffin that’s gauche or outdated, somebody is going to call me on it rather than hoisting me on their shoulders and chanting my name. That’s a real concern these days.
Maybe I’m overreacting, but it’s not like anyone is going to tell me. The honest to God truth is that the dying can do no wrong, and it’s not easy living this way.
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