Why?
Updated: Sep 2
When someone is given a terminal diagnosis, they are suddenly faced with questions no one knows how to answer.
Why me?
Why now?
Why can’t I have more time?
Why is this happening?
I have been asked those questions more times than I can count. And I never have the answer.
I was once at the bedside of a man who hadn’t yet turned 50. He had a daughter, but they had been estranged for most of her life. They had only just reconnected… because he was sick.
She looked at me with quarter-sized eyes and asked me why him. Why weren’t they given more time? Why couldn’t he get better?
And then she asked the hardest question.
“Why can’t you fix him?”
I wanted to. I really did. But what I have come to realize is that there is no real answer to the why.
Life happens. And then death happens. And somewhere in between, we make memories, fall in love, build relationships, laugh, hurt, forgive, and hopefully let the people we love know just how much they mean to us.
Sometimes we are reminded too late how precious life is.
I don’t believe there is always a reason one person dies while another lives. I don’t believe illness or death is always going to be handed out according to how well we lived, what we ate, or the choices we made.
Sometimes, death just happens.
It is unpredictable. It is unfair. And it is a mystery.
Maybe instead of asking why, we can simply ask…
What can we do with the time we have?
How can we live and love better?
What memories can we make?
What do we still want to say and do?
We don’t have to wait for something terrible to happen before we remember that life is fragile.
Every day we wake up is another day we get to experience this strange, beautiful, heartbreaking thing called life.
A bonus day.
Why?
I don’t know.
Life can be so darn unfair sometimes. We lose people we love, and it doesn’t make a bit of sense.
But we also get to fall in love. We get family and friends. We get music and laughter and sunsets and ordinary Tuesday mornings. We get beauty. We get magic. We get wonder.
Maybe there isn’t an answer to the why.
Maybe it is simply… this is the life we have, so let’s make the best of it.
xo
Gabby
I was at my son’s side for 9 months, thinking he had to survive Cancer! Watching him suffer with each different treatment, hoping, praying that his pain would subside!
He wouldn’t take pain medication as he was afraid he might get “hookef”! What difference would it make if he DID GET HOOKED? He would have had some relief for a few hours!
If, MAYBE, his situation helped someone in the future find some way to prolong their life; with less pain! IF MEDICAL records are kept for information!? I have a stack of his medical records, every drs names, meds, dates he went through!! I CANNOT bring myself to shred them. I have read the ones when he was i…
A very good reminder to live every day to it’s fullest; make that call to a friend, do that thing you have put off, always tell those close to you that you love them. Thank you for this nudge.