On Death and Dying Young

I've shelved this topic for far too long. It was too difficult to acknowledge, too absurd to believe yet too real to ignore, and so I procrastinated. Last summer, in the span of 3 short months, two young women from our Ottawa breast cancer network were taken from us, along with two of my former colleagues - remarkable women, professionals and human beings, who were snatched away by terminal illnesses. We said goodbye to Sarah, 30. Simona, 36. Shelly, 48. Linda, 58. The finality of death was never more apparent than it was in the summer of 2018. 

Enter 2019. Metastatic breast cancer rears its ugly head again, and takes two more young women from our ever-growing Ottawa network. Monica, 43. Katie, 35.

And then came Wednesday, the day when our little sisterhood fell apart. We lost Danielle, and this shook us to the core. Dani was our no-nonsense fighter. Our champion. Our comedian. She was kind, bold and fearless. She was a mother of two young boys. She was 42. 

It was time to write about death, I thought. But where were my words?

Too young? Is that really what I was thinking? Too needed? Too senseless? Too loved? It was actually none of these. It was not about their deaths - the why, the when, the how or the who that they have left behind. It had nothing to do with their dying, and everything to do with their living. 

I am here to write about how we live our lives, you and I. How we must live them, in order to LIVE them. Dani, Katie, Monica, Simona, Sarah, Shelly and Linda knew. My breast cancer sisters and I know. Anyone who has ever stared a life-threatening illness down the barrel knows. It changes you, it wakes you up. It grounds you and lets you see past all of the bullshit. It forces you to pay attention to your life and to live it.

"Be present". "Slow down". "Don't sweat the small stuff". All good advice, but it is simply not enough. Because it is not just about us or our thoughts. We don't walk this earth alone, nor do we live in our own little bubble, try as we might some days. We affect others every day, and each day brings with it the chance, or rather, a choice as to what message we send out. We need to pay attention to all of the people who are in our lives, and not just the ones who are near and dear to us. Stranger kindness is a real thing and speaks volumes. As for your loved ones, love them and love them fiercely. Tell them often. Call them, visit them and make them know, without any question or doubt, that they are brilliant and that they matter to you. How many of us go through life falsely believing that we are all alone when truth be told we have an army of kindness and support hovering silently nearby, ready to spring into action?

Need proof? Save a select few, most people's funerals are extremely well attended. And when I was faced with a serious illness, huge hearts, smiling faces and voices of strength emerged from seemingly nowhere. The same goes for each and every one of my cancer sisters.

The real question I suppose, is where are these rallying reinforcements when we go about our daily, mundane grind? Busy with their own lives, no doubt, but busy doing what? What exactly are we all so busy doing? The stuff that really matters, or are we spending our limited time and energy reacting to things that have no lasting impact on our lives? The driver that was going at a snail's pace. The long queue at the grocery store. The meeting that ran overtime. The neighbour who keeps their lawn in disarray. Irksome at worst. But so what? Will complaining about it make that uncomfortable feeling go away? It might temporarily ease our level of frustration, but then what?

What if we took a different perspective? That slow driver is your newly licensed teen who just passed his driver's test and is taking the car out alone for the first time. The grocery line backed up when your elderly aunt dumped her roll of nickels on the belt and insisted on counting out the exact change. Your favourite colleague-turned-manager worked through lunch and is having a tough day and lost track of time-keeping during that meeting. Your best friend hasn't cut their grass as they have been burning the midnight oil as a single mum working full time and trying to hold on to the only home her kids have known. When we look at our day-to-day interactions and see all of the people we interact with as real people, with real feelings like us, it suddenly becomes so easy to live with purpose.

Living with purpose is like activating a filter that scrutinizes everything you are allowing to enter into your life: your people, your environment, your job (or pursuit of one), your reactions to situations within and beyond your control, what you learn from and teach others, how you feel when you wake up each morning, and what you ponder as your head hits the pillow each night. Actively taking stock of these things helps you weed out the nonsense from the things that actually matter - the things that you will think of when faced with end of life. If you can see these things now, today, and start injecting them into your daily life, then you have already lived more than most people who will carry on to old age.

The one gem I've learned from my brief confrontation with my mortality is that my people really are out there - I just wasn't seeing them or letting them fully see me. My life was being lived through foggy lenses, and I was too distracted to stop and give them a good cleaning. It was only when my glasses were suddenly knocked off my nose, twisted, and stuck in a murky puddle in the summer's heat that I was forced to fish them out and examine them closely. Then I saw them for what they were. Mud-caked, imperfect, but not broken.

I try to keep my glasses clean now, and adjust them from time to time to ensure a snug fit. My vision has never been clearer. And I think Dani would be proud.