Sunday morning thoughts… It’s been a emotional last few days and I find myself tearing up over and over just thinking about a friend’s premature death. My friend had so much to live for, and she really, really wanted to live. And I don’t understand this wholly, but I’m simultaneously feeling strangely guilty that I’m still here, still have life left in me – even feeling pretty good these days – actually feeling the best that I have since before my diagnosis – because my friend tried so hard to live, too, equally as hard as me… so why have I been given the enormous blessing of more time, and not my friend? It doesn’t seem at all fair. Then I hear my Mama’s voice in my head, “Julie, life’s not fair.”

I really hate when people say someone with cancer loses a battle or was a fighter, or a warrior. Because people who have a cancer diagnosis just do what they have to do, one hour at a time, and some days it’s a minute at a time; and if they end up dying anyway, it’s certainly not because they didn’t fight hard enough, or want to live enough. Life and death aren’t within our control – we humans just don’t have that kind of power, even if our arrogance fools us into thinking that we do. So labeling us as fighters or warriors feels like enormous pressure to aspire to someone else’s expectations of hero status, on top of just dealing with the never-ending treatments of metastatic cancer.

A couple of times these last few days I’ve found myself feeling immense anger mingled in with the grief. My faith tells me that human lives are in God’s hands, but I still want to know WHY she couldn’t have more time? And then I can’t help wondering how much time I might have left, and I worry that I’m wasting this precious gift.

Cancer makes one reevaluate everything about life – what’s important and moreover, what’s really, really not. I mentally immersed myself in reframing my life the first few months after my diagnosis, and I have found myself doing it all over again with the death of my friend. I feel like I should somehow be doing more, giving more, loving more. What am I really supposed to do with the lovely gift of more time? Am I missing my purpose? And what am I continuing to do that is no longer serving a purpose, or possibly never did? These are my thoughts on this gorgeous Sunday morning. And now I’m going to drink the lovely coffee with my favorite humans, and thank God for the blessings of more time.

• Drink the Lovely Coffee
• Celebrate with me!
• The Living Church of the Socially Distanced
• I’m Still Here
• The Physician God Complex