To My Best Friend

To My Best Friend

I know you are hurting. I can still hear your broken voice. Trying to make sense of the words you were putting together over the ever glitchy bluetooth. I was driving to get home after a long day of seeing sick patients. Now I get to be whip-lashed by hearing your news. How the love of your life, the man that has meant the world to you for the majority of your adult life, is now diagnosed with invasive cancer.

Father of your teenage kids.

All that goes through my head is: this does not sound good. I wish I could tell you that it’s nothing. That it is part of a bigger plan. That it’s going to get easier.

It’s none of that. It’s hard because you have loved so deeply. You will mourn so deeply too. You will go through hell. No other way to look at it. Don’t let your friends calm you down or ask you to ‘get a hold of yourself’. Don’t let people try to push their herbs and agendas if that is not your cup of tea.

Politely say yes. Politely say no. Save yourself. Save your kids. The rest of the world will have to figure it out on their own. You are not responsible for their emotions. Their horror as they look at you. How your life changed in a split second after the biopsy.

This is your battle. You get to decide what goes and what stays.

You get to take long showers. Save your big cries for the showers. You will need them

It is not fair. Not when it happens to us. Not at a young age, and certainly not when we are just getting started in life.

We are meant to grow old. To see our kids grow up. To watch them graduate and get married. To hold grandchildren in our arms and spoil them.

It is not the rhythm of our lives to get a serious illness when we have been well for so long.

This can’t be right.

Not when you are not drinking or smoking.

Not when you have been so careful not to get COVID.

We were just starting to plan dinner parties again.

Whose sick joke is this?

I am so sorry and I wish that I was next to you holding you tightly to tell you that it will be alright.

It may or it may not. But there is no point in jumping head first to this catastrophic thinking. It helps no one. Not you. Not your husband. Not your children.

All you get to do is more of all that you have been doing.

Love. Cherish each other. Breathe. Experience life every day.

Just do it a little deeper now. Maybe take deeper breaths. For sure, try to love a little harder.

Love: It’s a funny thing. When you feel like you have nothing else left to give, you can still give a bit more love. I don’t know how it works, but that is how it is. Can’t tell you where it’s coming from, but the more you give it, the more you HAVE to give.

I also know that those who have a little of it, tend to hoard it and ration it somehow. Stay clear of those people now.

Now is the time to give love.

If not now, then when?

I love you. Take all of my love, my friend. You are going to need it.