Dying
These are the words of my best friend who has acute leukemia for the third time. He gave me permission to translate his words to English and to share them here.Â
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When Death offers you the grace of warning, do you waste the time you’re gifted in misery, agony, suffering, grieving, and painful denial? Or do you take that time to hold your children, to kiss your lover, to hug your friends, to watch the sunrises and the sunsets, to smell the flowers, to feel the wind, to dance, to love, to celebrate, to touch and be touched by everything that this life and this world can be?
I don’t want to spend the time I have left puking and in pain, lying in a hospital bed. I want to love my life while I still have it and leave it quietly and with dignity when it is my time. I’ve fought that fight twice and Death is still waiting for me. That isn’t the fight I want to die fighting.
Living is more important than not dying. I want to live before I die.
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I love him. He is MY life and I don’t know how I will continue to breathe once he stops. But I honor his choices and I honor his life. I promised him tonight that I will try to look for the beauty of life even in its pain. Few of us are given the gift of knowing how much time we have left.  Maybe we would all do more living if we could see our own hourglasses emptying before us.
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