“The tumor has shrunk.”

It was the best news I could possibly get on my 51st birthday on Friday, from one of my best friends. Diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer some months ago, their future is now forever altered from what we had assumed and taken for granted.

Another classmate, teammate, and amazing human has terminal brain cancer, dammit.

I write this from my happiest and most contented place on Earth, the Colorado Rockies. For five days I get to hike, read, write, and be. Having received so many messages of love and connection on my birthday, starting the moment I woke up, it was clear that the only way for me to move through this long weekend is in deep gratitude.

Framing everything this way makes my perceptions of and reactions to any and all life occurrences different and better–more tolerable and peaceful. On arrival, my greeting from family: “Hi. So you’ve gained a lot of weight recently, huh?” WTAF, really? –pause– Gratitude. Reframe: This encounter triggers me because it evokes my own inner fat-shame and body image issues. Long standing, multifactorial, and slowly improving, I am shown here that I have more inner work yet to do: self-compassion, self-acceptance, and self-discipline, among other things. Deep breath, forgiveness, thank you for this awareness; now I can let go and move on.

Gratitude makes me revel in my friendships–any and all opportunities to be present and attuned to the amazing humans I have the great, unearned fortune to know and love. In recent weeks I have had the opportunity to connect with my two friends above, and they humble me. Confronted with their own mortality in the prime of life, they exemplify grace. In our honest and loving conversations, they show me the absolute essence of vulnerability, courage, and perspective, and leave me in utter awe. We discuss frankly what it means and what it takes to get to peace with death. It reinforces my three take aways from Being Mortal by Atul Gawande: 1. We need to talk about death early and often, get comfortable with and accept it. 2. End of life decision making is about goals and trade-offs, and those of the dying take precedence. 3. The more peaceful the dying can feel at the end of life, the less suffering for those left behind. How lucky am I that my two friends lead by such wise and peaceful example?

We talk about grief, regrets, relationships, legacy, and meaning. We marvel together at the mind boggling advancement of cancer treatment in our lifetime, and the miracle that is the human body. We laugh, cry, and connect. I am shown starkly and in no uncertain terms that the most important thing in life is relationship, full stop.

One day, one moment, one breath at a time, my friends.

May we be present to all of it, as much as possible, in love and mindfulness, in mutual respect and humble communion. I’m sad, yes. And it’s okay. I revel in every day, every moment, every breath that my friends yet live. My highest goal and wish for them is to know how much they are loved and embraced, how they will never be forgotten, how all of us who know and love them will hold their spirits with us until we die ourselves. And that’s assuming something doesn’t take my own life before theirs end.
Tomorrow is not promised for any of us.

So knowing this, how will we choose to really live? Clarity on this visits me much more often as I age, and once again I am profoundly grateful. I get to choose love, respect, meaning, courage, and connection over resentment, disdain, judgment, and separation.

I can choose peace.

There will be time later to mourn, to grieve. Now is the time to honor, uphold, revel, and live fully in one another’s love and light.