I watched nine people die this year. Nine people who weren\u2019t news stories or dots connected by degrees of separation. Nine people who weren\u2019t just friends of friends of friends. They were people I loved. People who were a very real and profound part of my everyday life, some who had been for years, some who were my own blood.<\/p>\n
A 17-year-old drummer.
\nA 29-year-old stay-at-home dad.
\nA 22-year-old nursing student.
\nA 26-year-old marathon runner.
\nA 31-year-old artist.
\nAn 82-year-old veteran.
\nA 45-year-old former model and mother.
\nA 28-year-old writer.
\nA 42-year-old oncologist.<\/p>\n
I feel so little sorrow about it, which should concern me. And in many ways I know I should be concerned about the fact that I feel so little sorrow in this very moment or that I am able to get out of bed every morning and continue to attack every new day as if it was just another day.
\nAs if these nine people had never come and gone.
\nBut it is another day. And those people did come and go.
\nAnd the shape of my heart is not the same
\nas it was before I knew them.
\nWhich is precisely why I\u2019m not concerned.<\/p>\n
What was different about this year was that I was
\npresent in a way I had never been before.
\nI paid attention.
\nI looked for the beauty instead of mourning
\nwhat seemed to be its obvious absence.
\nIn the past I had only seen the darkness in death.
\nI only felt the missing shapes and had only seen the shadows.
\nBut I started noticing a pattern when a very close friend,
\nonly 24-years old, died after a long fight with her cancer.
\nWhat I noticed in her eyes in her final few days was the same
\nthing I had seen in my father\u2019s eyes right before he died.
\nThe same thing I had seen in my own eyes when I was
\n28-years old and fighting for my own life, trying to upend a
\ndoctor\u2019s predicted expiration date of \u201cthree months at best.\u201d
\nA lightness.
\nAn odd kind of resignation that felt like
\nthe opposite of resignation.
\nA kind of fearlessness I have never once seen on the
\nface of someone very much healthy and alive.
\nI\u2019m not a religious man in any way nor am I an atheist. And
\nI have always turned away from people who offer up their
\nsilver lining mini sermons, no matter how well-intentioned.
\nHe\u2019s in a better place now.
\nShe\u2019s not suffering anymore.
\nHe\u2019s with the people he loves.<\/p>\n
I get it. And I don\u2019t disagree.
\nIt would be foolish to disagree with the unknown.
\nSo I just embrace what I know instead.
\nAnd what I know is this:<\/p>\n
Reality is what is. And what is\u2014even at its most
\nexcruciating\u2014is inexplicably and infinitely beautiful.<\/p>\n
When I really examine the entirety of my own life, I see
\nhints of this light most often in my most glorious mistakes.
\nI see it in my failed attempts to both love and to be loved.
\nI see it in divorces and in lost jobs.
\nI see it in the screams and I see it in the silence.
\nAnd I see it most acutely on the days when the simple
\nnumbness of not knowing how to get through another
\nday is the only fuel I have to actually get me through it.<\/p>\n
Because it is there.
\nA light.
\nA tiny infinity that often seems to dim in
\nmoments I most need to see it.
\nAnd it always feels like it\u2019s the first thing to play
\nhide-and-seek with me when I am most terrified.
\nAnd this year, I got to witness nine people find
\nit after lifetimes of directionless searching.
\nI got to witness them find it where it always was all along.
\nWhere it is for all of us.
\nRight here.
\nIn this moment.
\nI could choose to drown in the collective
\nweight of these absences from my life.
\nMany people do just that with loss of all kinds. And that\u2019s okay.
\nIt\u2019s so human and it\u2019s so natural. But I know
\nthat such a cement never dries.
\nAnd I know I can make a different choice at any moment.
\nI can choose to stand back up.<\/p>\n
I often hear people describe those who fight their way through disease and illness as courageous. And I agree. But in my own struggles with four different forms of cancer I have found that courage is often just this: a profound lack of options.
\nFor me, it\u2019s more about letting go and not fighting what is.
\nIt\u2019s about knowing that the light I need is not one I have to seek, but one that is burning bright
\nright there in the center of my chest.
\nThat doesn\u2019t mean that the struggle to survive is
\nnot brutal and exhausting and capable of bringing
\nthe strongest human beings to their knees.
\nI think we all know it\u2019s often all of those things.
\nBut whether you are the person preparing for the
\njourney into the unknown or one of the ones left to
\nwatch the dust cling to the air where that person
\nonce stood, it\u2019s important to remember what I know
\nfrom having been on both sides of that itinerary:<\/p>\n
All of this.
\nNo matter how cleverly adorned or disguised.
\nIs inexplicably
\nand
\ninfinitely
\nbeautiful.<\/p>\n
This I know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four-time cancer survivor Glenn Rockowitz spends his days helping the dying. Here’s what he’s learned about death, grief, and life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":53222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[902],"tags":[512,934],"class_list":["post-53212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-poetry","tag-death"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n