Image right: My sister Jamie on the right / Image left: My uncle Ned Coleman

This post is part of my Cancer & Healing journal, an archive of the things I wrote while going through treatment for Stage III rectal cancer. These entries reflect what I knew, felt and was living through at the time.

I’ve been thinking a lot tonight about how fragile life really is.

Not in a cute inspirational quote way, but in the kind of way that hits you in the chest when loss keeps showing up at your door.

My sister passed away from brain cancer at 34. That loss carved something into me that never went away.

And today I learned that my uncle has passed away, far too young.

My heart aches for my family.

News like this shakes something loose inside you. It reminds you how quickly life can tilt, how none of us are promised any of this.

And walking through my own cancer fight right now has only sharpened that reality.

It heightens your senses. It pulls your attention into places you never looked before. It makes you see life in its rawest form.

The things that matter glow brighter.

The things that don’t matter fall away fast.

You start asking different questions. You start noticing who shows up. You start realizing how rare and sacred the simplest moments really are.

It also makes me look at the world we’re living in and wonder how we drifted so far from what actually matters.

We argue. We talk over each other. We listen just long enough to fire back. Everyone is busy, distracted, rushing, numb.

And none of that noise means anything when you’re facing loss or illness or the truth that our time here is painfully short.

I miss the things that used to anchor us.

Sunday suppers. Grandparents and grandkids in the same room. Families showing up for each other. Slower days with more connection and less noise.

We traded so much of that away without realizing what it cost us.

But moments like today remind me again that life is fragile.

Time is precious.

And the things that matter are beautifully simple.

Love your people.

Slow down.

Be present.

Say the words.

Appreciate what is right in front of you before it becomes a memory.

Tonight I am thinking of my sister. I am thinking of my family.

And I am holding close the truth that none of us get to know how much time we have left.

If you’re reading this, call someone you love. Hug your people. Sit with them a little longer.

Life is short, and it moves fast.

Choose what matters while you still can.

Looking Back

Cancer didn’t introduce me to mortality.

I already knew it.

I had lost my sister to glioblastoma when she was only 34. I had already experienced the kind of loss that permanently changes your understanding of how much time we’re promised.

Which is none.

But having cancer myself changed my relationship with that knowledge.

Before cancer, death could still be put back on the shelf. You know it’s there. You’ve seen what it can do. You understand intellectually that your own life is finite. But eventually you return to work and grocery lists and Christmas and bills and all the ordinary things that allow us to forget for a while.

Cancer makes that harder.

Suddenly mortality isn’t something that happened to somebody you loved.

It has your name on it too.

I don’t mean that I believed I was dying when I wrote this. I didn’t. I was in treatment and very much planning on coming out the other side.

But cancer had taken away some of the luxury of pretending that life stretches endlessly ahead.

Reading this now, I recognize the beginning of something I still wrestle with.

How do you understand that life is fragile without becoming afraid to live it?

How do you acknowledge death without allowing it to occupy the life you still have?

I don’t think the answer is pretending mortality isn’t there.

Maybe it’s exactly what I wrote that night.

Love your people.

Sit at the table.

Say what needs saying.

Do work that matters to you.

Pay attention.

And when something beautiful or completely ordinary is happening right in front of you, be there for it.

Because someday, one way or another, it becomes a memory.

And that’s not pessimism.

That’s being alive.