Sad Days

I have spent a few days thinking and wondering and wrestling with conflicting thoughts and ideas. I am asking questions with no real answers. I am exploring doubts with no clear resolutions.

On Thursday a terrible thing happened. Nikki, a friend and fellow blogger, lost her life in a car accident. She, a talented doctor, was in Cambodia to help others. This is yet another devastating event for her family as her partner, Sarah, lost her life to cancer last summer.

Nikki and the SWLF Sisters were exceptionally supportive of me during my cancer treatment and have also been incredible cheerleaders to others facing this disease. It is all through their own grief and sadness that they maintained such a positive presence in my life and the lives of others. I am so thankful and grateful for each and every one of them.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year I can’t tell you how many hours I spent wondering how this could have happened to me. I was not brought up in a particular faith so over my life I have had to find my way through established doctrine and alternative faiths in order to create a belief system that makes sense to me. I have wondered if The Universe has a plan for us all and how could my plan include cancer at such a young age? How did that happen? I thought about dying young without fulfilling all my dreams and was very sad and scared. I wondered if I had deserved this fate due to a negative previous life. I know I haven’t been a bad person this time around but maybe I was supposed to be better and that is why I got cancer. Do people deserve the bad things that happen to them? How did that apply to my situation?

I wanted to believe that there was some sort of Divine Justice. I hoped that everything Happened For a Reason. I thought about Destiny versus Freewill. I talked with a minister who is a breast cancer survivor herself and got her thoughts about these questions and this is what she told me.

“Life is not fair and there is no justice. Bad things happen to good people all the time and good things happen to bad people as well. The vast majority of people do not in any way deserve the terrible things that happen to them. This TOTALLY sucks.”

I am paraphrasing most of that but the “sucks” part is verbatim.

So I decided that there is the possibility of experiencing a little bit of everything in The Universe but absolutely no guarantees it will work out how you think it should. Maybe you will get to see Divine Justice occur on Earth in some situations but maybe that judgment happens in another realm out of our view. Or not at all. Maybe some things happen for a reason and maybe some things happen for no reason. Maybe you don’t see the reason right away or you don’t like the reason and block it out. I think EVEREYBODY is destined to have something terrible happen in their life. Some things are worse than others and some people get more than what seems fair but nobody is immune. The freewill part is how you deal with your tragedies. You do have a great deal of control over how you do that.

I admired Nikki so much as she chose the deal with her sorrow by helping those who needed it most. She and The Sisters spread love and support as a way to celebrate Sarah’s life. I saw and learned about grace and generosity from these women and their families. I saw them endeavor to accept what they couldn’t change and do amazing things with what they could.

As time has gone by I have come to realise that if not for my cancer I never would have met Nikki and The Sisters as well as all of you. While I would never think of my cancer as a good thing, good things have come to me as a result of it. It would be foolish for me not to accept and celebrate these aspects of my own difficulties. Maybe they are good reasons for my cancer. Maybe I will see more reasons as time goes on. Maybe not.

I have been eating chocolate in Nikki and Sarah’s honour. I have been thinking about them being together again and this helps a little. Mostly I have once again been made aware of how tenuous life is. How what time we have with the people that we love is such a gift.

I wish so desperately that this accident would have never happened. There is so much I wish I had control over that I don’t. I will shake my head and resist the brutal unfairness of it all. I will question and argue and try to make the puzzle pieces fit in a way that seems logical in My Universe. I will be angry and sad and bitter. For a while. Deep down I know that I have to eventually acknowledge the futility of this and concentrate my energy on things I can change and control. Remain open and receptive to any lessons. Exercise my freewill in a meaningful and powerful way.

I have no way of knowing if this makes sense to anybody reading thus far but I want to close with this; I feel very lucky and blessed to have known Nikki and I will miss her.