Perspective
I had lunch today with a former coworker who is undergoing chemotherapy for stage 4 cancer. She’s doing well, all things considered. I hadn’t seen her for a couple months, so we gossiped about the (screwed-up) company that laid us both off, touched on politics, and caught up on life in general.
I listened to my friend, who is only a couple years older than my mom, speak optimistically about life even when faced with hard statistics around the term “life expectancy.” She plans to be around much longer than her doctors expect, and not to accept an ounce of pity along the way. It made me contemplate the complaining I’ve done recently about the virus from hell I had (which seems to be 99% gone at this point) and threw things into perspective.
She lives closer to me than I realized, so I plan to take her some food once in a while and visit more often.
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Today would have been my grandmother’s 83rd birthday. Even though she probably would have voted for McCain, I still wish I could have sent her another belated birthday card and maybe said something sarcastic over the phone that made her laugh and/or want to pray for me.
