My Friend With Cancer, Words of Wisdom.

Sun is cherished and romanticized the most at sunrise and sunset, so is birth and death. These are two focal points, which we rejoice and grieve the most, more than anything in between. A friend of mine is suffering from terminal cancer, I previously wrote about this few moths ago.

The last few days have been very turbulent and conflicting for me.  On one hand I have to face the eventuality of this situation and on the other hand I feel guilty because I can not control myself from thinking that what if this was me. I feel a certain bond with him as I have two daughters too of the same age. What would I have done? Would I have shown the same dignity?  I try to distract my self in other things so that I do not have to think about this.

I was sitting next to his bed just a couple of days ago. How do you answer when your friend ask you is there any hope when there is none. It is different when you tell a patient that they are dying, it is quite different when you have to say to a loved one. I held his hand and firmly informed him that this is the end of the road and controlled myself from showing my emotions.

But I am not writing today to tell you about how I feel, as someone said it once, regardless of how bad one feel for the other, you can never feel close to the despair the other person is going through.

This is what he said to me with shallow breaths and teary eyes for almost thirty minutes after I told him what I think. I got his permission to write this and I will try to quote him the best I can.

“One thing cancer has taught me is that the world is not about you. When you turn the world about you, your life becomes very difficult. You have stressful days and you have days of agony. When you decide that your life is about others, about friends, about relationships, your world becomes a lot easier. When you stop focusing on “me”, and start to focus on people and relationships around you, you world starts to get easier. That is tough lesson I have learned from my cancer.

He paused briefly, then continued "I am really into my 2 little girls, just like any father. I had a very touchildhood…. My life long goal was to have a perfect family. And to have kids, and to shower them with parental love more than which I ever got. With this mentality I started my family. If I would have known my life would take a sharp turn like this I would have never done it. I did not know I was going to die this young. Because I can not bear to think that my kids will miss and not look at me in their later lives. I do not want them to wonder where is daddy, when is daddy coming home?

My older one knows that what is going on. My relationship with her has changed. She is more quite. She gives me hugs everyday, the kind of hugs she did not give me before. Before she used to give me hugs which a typical 9 year old gives to her  daddy depicting “I love you so much”, in the past few months she gives me a hug which is more like “daddy I do not want you to go”, for a nine year old to go through this, is heart breaking.

I fight this disease because of my daughters. Your life should revolve around your family. Your should not sacrifice your family”.

Well I just want you to know buddy, the love and affection your girls have already received, very few children get it in their whole lifetime.