Not Everyone Gets Forever

 I heard recently that a woman I used to work with has stage 4 breast cancer. She is younger than me. She has four children - just like me. Two boys and two girls...just like me.  We are facebook "friends" and although I am almost never on the website, I found myself looking at her page today wandering through her pictures. In those moments of her life captured on film, I wonder if she knew something was wrong inside her body? Did she have an inkling that something sinister lurked within her? That it was spreading in her body trying to cause havoc? Or was she like most of the rest of us? Just enjoying a vacation on the beach with loved ones oblivious to the knowledge that was only months, weeks, days from becoming her reality.

The day I found out about her cancer I immediately looked up what I could about it on the internet. The information I found left me with a huge pit in my stomach. I asked the universe to please let her live. Please let her live a long life and die of old age. Please don't end her story anytime soon. 

When we are little we think that living to an old age is like living forever. Being 70, 80, 90 years old seems like an eternity when you are small. Most of us naively believe in our youth that everyone gets to live this long and everyone is guaranteed their forever. 

As we age, we become more and more acutely aware that this is not the case. Not by a long shot. 

As we age, we understand that living to a ripe old age and then dying peacefully in our sleep is a gift, not a given. We learn that babies die, children, young mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, too. We learn that life doesn't make sense and that it isn't fair. 

I cannot stop thinking about this woman and about her children and partner. 

And I cannot stop thinking about how her illness could easily be mine. How we all walk such a thin line in life between sickness and health. Why do I deserve my health and she does not? I am no better than her. None of us are. 

And yet here we all are. I feel an overwhelming sense of anger in times like these - at the injustice of the world. It shouldn't be this way. Yet it is and there is not a damn thing I can do about it except hope for a miracle for this woman. 

Hearing this woman's news makes me appreciate my own life so much more. It makes me appreciate all of the mundane moments that I take for granted every day. Because not everyone has this luxury. 

Not everyone gets forever.