you were going to die soon, what would you do? I mean, we are all going to die and most of us will probably not have advanced notice of impending death. But some of us will get sick and know the end is near. If that was you, what would you do? How would you write your last days?
I know this is morbid and taboo maybe even, but one of my oldest friends is facing that reality, and it has me thinking. She does not want a post-hummus funeral. She does not want her daughters (14 and 17) to be sad. Rather, she wants a “living funeral” where she says goodbye to everyone personally. I don’t know if I can think of anything sadder and more gut-wrenching, for everyone.
She’s probably stronger than me. She has walked though this journey and made it look so easy. She has stayed positive against all odds. And even now, stopping treatments and facing death, she is so graceful. I don’t think I could ever be that way.
I wonder what I would want in my last days. Probably to sit with my family and play every single board game on our shelf, to watch all the movies they want me to see that I don’t have time for right now, to just make damn sure they all know just how much I love them and how damn hard I fought to stay with them, and that I would give all my limbs and a kidney and any other organ I don’t even need if it meant more time with them. To make sure how much my kids know they deserve love and to seek it out and live their best lives because I will be watching them every single moment and will be there waiting for them on the other side. I don’t think I would want to share that time with many other people except my immediate family.
My heart breaks for her for all the moments she won’t be physically present for...the high school graduations, college acceptances and graduations, careers, marriage and babies maybe. And my heart breaks for her beautiful girls who won’t have their mom around for all of those things and for their first heartbreaks and job interviews and just all the life questions you need your mom for. My heart breaks for her mom, because no one should ever have to bury their own child. And my heart breaks for her husband, who I have known as long as I have know her, because of the widowed life he now has to navigate. Like any other Dad and husband I know, he wasn’t the coordinator of schedules and accounts and all the day to day of running a household. But also because they didn’t get nearly enough time together. My heart breaks for the world, because she is truly a light.
I don’t know how you possibly prepare those around you for the fact that your time on earth is drawing near. I don’t know how you tell your mom and your kids that there is nothing more doctors can do, and that you only have X amount of time left. I don’t know how you do that and have it not break your own heart. I don’t know how you do that and find a way to be grateful for the time you have had and not angry for the time you won’t have. And yet, here is my beautiful friend doing just that. And going above and beyond so she can personally say goodbye to all of us. But that’s who she is.
My heart breaks for myself as well.
