Mortality Lesson

This past weekend, a woman I was Facebook friends with passed away. And for whatever reason, I took it harder than I expected. I mean, I knew her mostly through electronic means. We met in person only once, but the steady stream of posts, images of her family, and her sharing of her illness made me feel closer to her than some of the other Facebook friends I have.

She was a bubbly and gregarious woman in her late 40s. I remember when she started posting that she was bothered by night sweats and low grade fevers. Her doctor told her, it’s aging, it’s menopause, it’s just what happens when women get older. For weeks, she expressed how frustrated she was. She knew something wasn’t right. Then came the rounds of blood tests. And then the rounds of doctors examining her. But it took months before someone recommended an X-ray followed by an MRI. That was how she found out that she had Stage 4 ovarian cancer.

Throughout it all, she posted on Facebook statuses the frustration, the weariness, the wish for a diagnosis for why she didn’t feel right, and then the fear of what this diagnosis meant to her, to her family. I was sad for her, but she had an amazing perspective. She was going to fight to have quality of life. She wasn’t taking to her bed to mope (at least not nearly as much as I would have). I sent encouraging replies to her statuses – except that month when I wasn’t sure of my own prognosis because I feared my own scare would somehow seep through my words.

But in the last month, she took a turn for the worst. She journeyed to Houston, to MD Anderson Cancer Center – one of the best treatment hospitals in the country. She had lots of blood draws, but all of them returned results that basically meant that she couldn’t have her ovary removed. The fear was palpable in her posts. She knew that time was running out. Then her daughter began tagging her, talking about how grateful she was to have time with her mom, to talk, tell stories, say how much they loved each other. And then, on Saturday morning, I opened my feed to see a beautiful image of my friend with the words “Heaven gained another angel”.

I’m tearing up even typing this and I’m not sure why. All I know is that when I met her about two years ago, she was vibrant, the picture of health. About a year ago, her posts were about the decorating she was doing for Spring, her visits with her grandchildren, her happiness when we got some rain here in south central Texas. And then, in what feels like a blink of an eye, she’s gone. And even though I know that Stage 4 ovarian cancer is a very serious diagnosis, even though one of my friend’s mom passed from the disease a few years back, I’m still unsettled at how quickly she seemed to go from health to death.

I don’t know if being told that I harbored cancer in my body is making it feel more real, more scary or what. All I know is that I’m sad for her family and sad that cancer has claimed someone who clearly enjoyed life.