Hysteria

Dear Girl,
A year ago I lay in this bed; dreading sleep, dreading the business of getting up, dreading the business of  going to the hospital, where a surgeon would cut me open and take out whole pieces of me. I don't think I have felt whole, since.

When my doctor came into my room to see me, hours after the surgery was over, she told me what they'd found. How it was bigger than expected. How she was sure I would feel better, now. How the size of the growth was just further evidence that I'd made the right choice in opting for surgery. I asked her if I could see the growth. She gave me a surprised look, and said she hadn't thought to keep it for me. The growth, along with my uterus and fallopian tubes and cervix, had become medical waste. Packed in plastic bags marked "HAZMAT," no doubt, and disposed in the way such things are. Burned? Dumped at an illegal site? I have no idea. I know this, though: they are lost forever. 

I almost wish they'd saved those pieces in a glass jar for me. Even the growth. If I had such a jar, full of all of my old pieces, I could hold it up to the light, and get a good look at who I was, once upon a time.

As it stands, Dear One, I am like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. No wonder I'm so tired and melancholy. It's all I can do to write you this pitiful letter. 

I would have liked to have seen those pieces...to have given them a proper farewell. I never imagined I'd miss them.