When my sister was killed in 2001 I kept thinking, “I wish I could’ve said good-bye.” I thought that knowing that someone’s time on earth was coming to an end would be better than having them abruptly taken away. I was wrong. No matter how it happens, death sucks.
A friend of ours was diagnosed with cancer a little over a year ago. She’s fought hard. Real hard. Chemo and the whole nine yards. She twittered about her experience until recently, when the doctor’s dropped a bomb.
“It’s terminal. There is nothing more that can be done.”
I met this woman, Rannie Yoo Reid, for the first time at the Hard Knox Cafe in the Inner Richmond. She is a petite Asian gal whose face was left disfigured by the surgery that removed her cancerous parotid gland. She was wearing a hat because chemo had caused her hair to fall out and she had decided to just shave it all off. From the very start of our conversation, over chicken and biscuits, she was open and brutally honest about her cancer and how it made her feel. She’s a foodie, like me, and lost a lot of her ability to taste certain kinds of food during her chemotherapy. I appreciated the fact that she was so real. Everything about cancer sucks. Why not be honest about it? I respect her for not acting like it isn’t a big deal. It IS a big deal. A HUGE deal.
Our friends got married in their PJ’s in bed about four days before she died.
I can’t even begin to imagine what their last days together were like, knowing that there was going to be an end to their relationship much sooner than there should’ve been.
We attended her memorial with about a thousand of her friends. It was amazing how many people she touched during her life. My sister’s “celebration of life” memorial was equally amazing. Although, it’s a blur. I have a tape of the celebration, I have yet to watch it… I think I will next year, on the nine year anniversary of her death.
My sister Shannon circa 1984. I’m pretty sure I had something to do with her crazy outfit and the skates. I was the big sis!If there’s one lesson to be taken from death, it’s that you should live your life. What that means is entirely up to you. But to me, that means spending time with my friends and family and remembering that even with all the stress life throw my way, at least I’m living it.
It’s taken me some time to post about this…. I’m never quite sure if I should be talking about it, telling people… but it’s part of who I am today. I don’t want to not talk about it just because it makes people uncomfortable. I think we are doing everyone a real disservice by not talking about death and dying. Everybody does it. Acting like it doesn’t happen is B.S. It happens a lot. To bad people, good people, and eventually, to all of us.
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