A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 22

This is the 10th year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: I’m a Chef With Terminal Cancer. This Is What I’m Doing with the Time I Have Left.

Fatima Ali is a chef in NYC and a former ‘Top Chef’ contestant. Last year, she was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. She underwent chemotherapy and surgery and wrote about how the experience changed her relationship to food. In September, Ali learned that the cancer had returned and was told she had a year to live. Here, she writes about how the terminal diagnosis is giving her a new perspective on life.

Sitting in the airport lounge, I can feel her gaze locked on the back of my head before I see her. Her brows furrowed under dark bangs, small fists curled up around the sides of her princess dress. She stares at me, eyes full of curiosity and confusion. She senses that something is not quite right. It’s not just the baldness that gives it away or the sallow skin or baggy clothes. A cloud of death is following me. It’s followed me all the way to the first class lounge at LAX. I have never flown anything but basic economy on a domestic flight, but my illness has forced me to upgrade my life.

The cancer cells my doctors believed had vanished are back with a vengeance in my left hip and femur bone. My oncologist has told me that I have a year to live, with or without the new chemotherapy regimen. I was looking forward to being 30, flirty, and thriving. Guess I have to step it up on the flirting. I have no time to lose.

It’s funny, isn’t it? When we think we have all the time in the world to live, we forget to indulge in the experiences of living. When that choice is yanked away from us, that’s when we scramble to feel. I am desperate to overload my senses in the coming months, making reservations at the world’s best restaurants, reaching out to past lovers and friends, and smothering my family, giving them the time that I so selfishly guarded before.

I hate to use my illness as a tactic, but I swallow my guilt as I slip into Noma’s DMs to see if somehow the Copenhagen restaurant can accommodate a table for two for their already booked seafood season. I’m floored when I receive a reply from chef Rene Redzepi himself. Turns out that people respond when you tell them you’re dying of cancer.

It’s the classic question: What would YOU do if you discovered you only had a few months to live? If I were a chef, what might my choices be? Visit old friends in the culinary arts? How about looking at the list of restaurants around the world I’ve always wanted to visit, but haven’t and traveling to all of them to fill my last days with succulent foods.

Or…

What if I prepared a feast? My ultimate meal. Inviting everyone who has been important to me. My friends and family say, “What of the stress? To get everything right, all that pressure could kill you.” And I’d laugh. I’m already dying.

But yes, it would be a challenge. Depleted health. Some guests I’d be happy to see. Others representing painful chapters in my past, perhaps I invite them to ask for forgiveness.

The movie would certainly build to a big Act Three: The Meal.

Ultimately, anyone writing this story would have to deal with this question: What does the meal mean to the Protagonist? This is NOT just about making a meal, it means something more to the character.

A Last Supper, perhaps?

There you go: My twenty second story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Here are links for all the previous posts in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.