How can a patient deal with three weeks notice?
A week to three, is what Mo’s sisters friend has been told before her cancer claims her life. She’s only 54 years old. She hasn’t started to fill in the back chapters of her ‘book of life.’
Isn’t this the time when we whisper to ourselves, “Why can’t they do something else?”
It’s such a brutal disease. Finding out the cancer has gone to places where hope doesn’t live, leaves a big empty hole in all of us. Especially those of us who have experienced that emptiness firsthand.
So what do you do? As a caregiver, a family member, a friend, as hard as it is, taking each day and adjusting to the changes the cancer creates, is the only thing to do.
The conversations become so important too. Say the things you need to say.
There are no ‘do-overs’ with these good-byes.
Three weeks notice doesn’t leave much time.
March 30, 2012 @ 10:41 am
My mother was really only ill three weeks before she died. But I tried to keep a vision of what she was spared. There was a beautiful piece on Storycorps (NPR) this morning, of a man telling his step-son his feelings about his impending death from cancer.
March 30, 2012 @ 9:01 am
I’m so sorry about your friend. You are right that three weeks is not enough time to say goodbye. That’s all we had for my sister and she was able to say good bye to the people that she loved. She made it so much easier on us by telling us she was ok and she was ready. We were the ones that were not ready to say goodbye. May your friends last days be peaceful and filled with love.