Living or Dying?

By Pandora Poikilos

As we move from one chapter of our lives to another, we carry with us a sense of ignorance that the people we love will somehow be around for as long as we are. In this bubble we create and shelter ourselves in, there are no illnesses, no accidents, no heart wrenching losses. Then one day, we lose someone so suddenly that we know how short life really is and how we make it a habit of taking people for granted despite telling ourselves that's not what we do.

I lost a friend today. After years of fighting complications from her illness, she succumbed. When I got the news, I spent the day curled up and crying. Everything came to a standstill. I cried for her, I cried for the memories that we've had, I cried because there just didn't seem enough to tell her everything I wanted to, I cried for the pain she must have felt and most of all I cried because I don't have her strength. Facing brain surgery myself, something she has already been through, the first thought that came to my head was to call off my surgery and take my chances. And as much as I tried to break it down logically, I knew that it wasn't death I feared. It was the process of getting there.

The pain for which no words can do it justice and no one else can understand. The numerous treatments. Endless medication. The way someone looks at you, so thankful that they don't have what you have or that look of pity because they can't believe you've lost so much of your physical appearance for the worst. The way family or friends become tied to your bedside in literally picking you up and almost forgetting that they have their own lives outside your illness.

I became so engrossed in thinking of the downsides and of all the things that could go wrong during the surgery, I failed to come to terms with the most important thing - it's not my call to decide my time of death but I do have a choice about how I get there. I can choose the easy way out of giving up, irrelevant of how much I was loved or I could live, holding each moment of every day wrapped around me like the feel of Christmas morning and remember that every time, I choose to give up, I'm giving on the people who've not given on me.

In giving up, I lose lessons about the love that looks past your surgical scars and bald head to hold you as you sleep or the friends that will teach you that geographical distance is only in an atlas and will be with you in any means they can and most of all if I give up, I'll never get to the purpose of why I'm here in the first place.

"The soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live." (The Rose, Bette Midler)