A reader captures it:
Wednesday will be the third anniversary of the day my wife Becky died. She battled lung cancer for a year and a half; she was diagnosed at the age of 30 with no risk factors. And the thing about Becky is that she was never, ever dying of cancer, but always living with it. She taught her classes on Friday – she was an assistant professor of mathematics – and died on Sunday, and spent an hour in the hospital on the day she died designing a project for her students for the next semester. She wasn’t in denial of what the prospects were for metastatic lung cancer, but at the same, she spent her days doing the things that made them worth living.
I have read a lot of comments about how having a positive attitude and continuing to move forward with your life gives you the best chance to live longer. I don’t know about that; I hope it is true, but it isn’t always true. What I learned from being her partner during this time is that we don’t have as much control as we’d like about how long we live, but we do have a lot of control over how we live. Becky continued living with cancer the way she had lived before being diagnosed; she was the same mother, wife, friend, teacher, though sometimes lugging around an oxygen machine. That demonstrates the goodness of her life before her diagnosis, and it is the number one lesson I have tried to bring to my widowed life. If I found out today that I had a year to live, and that meant I would change the way I spend my days, then I need to change the way I spend my days now. It is my hope that having someone in the public eye being so open, brave, and grateful for the blessing of this day might cause many other people to examine their lives as well.
The Dish 