It seems so weird and awful that life goes on despite the fact that someone I know has this terrible disease and every single thing about her life is changed completely and forever. Her entire family's days now revolve around dealing with her illness and treatment, and around trying to continue living their lives with this awful reality. Meanwhile, I still go to exercise class, still enjoy my friends and family and my work, and life continues to go on without her. People still live and laugh and do whatever they do, and it feels so very sad to me.
I saw Sharon this weekend and she mentioned how much she misses Ginny's classes, misses exercising, and how she hates that her abdomen is swollen like she's pregnant. I would feel exactly the same way -- would want to just carry on with my normal life and do all the things I love to do, pack as much as possible into each day, but suddenly you can't, and probably never will be able to again. It's so so abrupt and final and awful. I feel sick just thinking about it.
Life can be hard, and we go through lots of ups and downs with our families, our kids, our spouses, our jobs, and our friends and their various troubles. But this kind of thing really does put it all in stark perspective. This is my very first experience with someone my own age getting sick like this. I guess that means I've been pretty lucky. I've experienced very little tragedy or early death first hand.
But Sharon seems very calm and positive, as she is about everything, and doesn't seem to be panicking or worrying about rushing to start treatment, taking it one step at the time. I admire that so much. I know she isn't big on organized religion, not sure if she believes in god even, and seems to have that eastern "power of now" kind of approach to life which seems especially wise and helpful and sensible at a time like this. I hope when it's my turn to face this kind of thing, I react the same way.
I've been thinking about this a lot, and when my time is up I want to just be grateful for the incredible, lucky, healthy, trauma and tragedy-free life I've led, with my family and all my friends, my work and travels and adventures, marriage and kids and experiences. I've lost my dad but still have my mom, I have all my siblings, I have my husband and three healthy almost-grown daughters who are strong enough now to stand on their own. Who would all be absolutely OK if something happened to me. That is a good feeling, and I realize for the first time in my life that I don't fear death like I used to. No longer believing in god doesn't make it more difficult at all. I'm not afraid. Something about this tragic experience has helped me to realize that, and it's a great thing to know.
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