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Being Strong Has Nothing to Do With Who Lives or Dies
I’m furious right now.
By the time my daughter turned fifteen, she knew she was dying. She’d already been sick for four years. She’d undergone chemotherapy, a liver transplant, radiation, multiple surgeries to remove recurring tumors, and a nonstop cocktail of oral chemotherapy, anti-rejection drugs, steroids, and opioids for her pain.
Ana didn’t die because she wasn’t strong. She died because sometimes children get sick and there’s not a damn thing we can do to save them.
By the time Ana was terminal, she was done with platitudes. She didn’t want to hear how strong or brave she was. She had no patience for those who urged her to stay positive. In the last year of her life, her expectations for a miracle treatment had evaporated. She simply wanted to live for as long as she could.
She was still making plans with her friends during the final week of her life, still texting, still dragging her pain-wracked body out of bed not because the cancer wasn’t dominating her life — it was. She did this because she was determined to live her life until the moment she couldn’t.
Ana was scared of dying, but she faced illness and death anyway. This is what made Ana brave.
