If there's one thing you can be sure about in life, it's that you can never be sure about life. 'You never know what's around the corner' or 'you could be hit by a bus tomorrow' are such cliches. But they're true.
I'm the queen of putting things off till tomorrow or leaving things till the last minute. 'It's fine,' I tell myself. 'I've got plenty of time.' And usually I do, but that's the arrogance of youth (early 30s is still young, thank you).
Often the experiences lurking behind these 'corners' everyone likes to bang on about are amazing, life-affirming, heart-lifting, positive. In my 33 years, I'd say I've had my fair share of these, and feel hugely grateful for that.
But sometimes, something happens that's just so sad and shocking and awful that your heart feels like it's shattered into tiny little pieces. Pieces that are too small and numerous you'll never be able to find them all and put them back together, even if you had the right glue. That's how I feel today, for my oldest friend who's just lost her husband to cancer. He was 45 and they'd been married less than three years. It's not just her heart that's in bits, it's her whole world.
In the 18 months since finding a mutated mole on Jules' neck in November 2009, he and Jenny have been through hell. Operations, skin grafts, radiotherapy, drugs, bouts in hospital and hospices. Taking one day and one diagnosis at a time. Feeling scared, then hopeful, then scared, then hopeful all over again with each fresh hospital appointment. A full 18 months dealing with the unstoppable march of a disease that spread from his skin to his lymph nodes, his spine and finally his brain. Until yesterday. He is finally free. She doesn't know what to do with herself.
Having just celebrated my first wedding anniversary and being in that stage of planning our life together. Setting up a joint account, working out how we can ever afford to buy a house, when's the right time for a baby, what we should be doing career-wise. That was Jen's life before cancer too. Now she's facing an uncertain future. The years that stretch ahead suddenly seem long and grey and lonely. And they will be. For a while.
Luckily for Jen, she has some amazing friends and I know that they (we) will be there for her to help her through the next few weeks, months, year. We'll love her and support her when she crumbles. She is an amazing, beautiful, kind, generous, irrepressible woman and I know, in time, she'll get through this.
But in the meantime, Jules' death has made me realise that if I keep putting things off until tomorrow, I'll never accomplish anything. I'll always be on the cusp of great things - or even medicore things, or terrible things - but that's no way to life a life. I don't want to be on the edge. I want to be right in the middle. Don't you?
No comments:
Post a Comment