Our Days Are Short

Part One.

I recently learned that one of Sweet Dub's friends from law school, who had been battling breast cancer, had been sent home from the hospital. She is not going home to recuperate. The cancer has spread to her brain. She is going home to die.

This woman is about my age. She is one of a group of us that all got pregnant at the same time and all had our first children (all girls) within months of each other. She lives in New York, while the rest of us are in California, so I do not know her well. I only know stories from the rest of the group and those are few, since we don't see each other all that much.

(I just realized that it's possible this news is what caused my recent nightmare about Sweet Dub dying. I am not too swift sometimes.)

So I don't know her all that well, but I can't get it out of my mind. It's heartbreaking to imagine leaving your loved ones behind. Not to mention that cancer is a shitty way to die, though honestly there are not many un-shitty ways to die. But I know, because my grandfather's cancer ultimately spread to his brain, that it's a horrifically painful way to go, and it just makes the whole situation extra horrible to me.

This news has been percolating in my brain, and then I saw this: 



And you know, it made me pause. Because when faced with your imminent death, you have to wonder what it was all for. What do you leave behind you? And I might not get cancer but I don't know the number of my days, and neither do you. And faced with this fill-in-the-blank, the first thing that came to my mind was:

Before I die I want to:

Operate from a place of love and openness rather than fear.

Wow. What?

Stay tuned for some sloppy self-analysis and probably some navel-gazing. It'll be fun! I'll bring the pretzels.