Life's Too Short, But They're Wrong

So I’ve become obsessed lately with the lyrics to the song, “Just Go On” from the fictitious musical, “Gangly Orphan Jeff” from the Neflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. For those of you who may not have watched it on YouTube 12,000 times, here’s a snippet:

Oh, the sun will rise in the morning

Or so I’m told, but who knows?

You could win a million bucks in the morning and then get rolled

By a mob of stinkin’ hobos

Good news, you can’t lose

When you tell Mr. Blues that you choose to keep going

We’ll never stop; we’ll keep on moving forward

Even if we don’t know what we’re moving toward

They say life’s too short, but they’re wrong

—It’s so long

Sometimes the only way to go

Is to just go on.

It’s sung by the amazingly talented Titus Burgess and Carol Kane and penned by Tina Fey’s clearly genius husband, and perfectly encapsulates the last few years… oh hell, it encapsulates my entire approach to life for the past decade or so:

just go on.

I am just floored by life these days. It’s like an insane game that no one would choose to play if they had any choice in the matter. Just when you think you’ve mastered one level, it throws a new, much harder, task in your lap that you need to complete while blindfolded and hogtied, thankyouverymuch. I’ve started to seriously respect my elders because, damn… if you can fit this much living into 40 years, I can’t even imagine what happens to you by the time you make it to 80…

So my best friend’s wife passed yesterday. And wow. It’s all the kinds of awful.

• She did not go gently. It was a horrible, painful, ugly death.
• My best friend had to watch this over the last two months and it wrung her out in a way I haven’t seen since she worked on the pile after 9/11.
• She leaves behind two small boys who she never really got to say goodbye to.

But there’s so much more. In the years before she passed, her wife changed a lot. Illness made her scared and angry and it became easy to forget who she was years ago. So along with the relief that any family experiences when someone with a terminal illness finally passes, it’s all mixed up with relief that the years of struggling (sometimes with her) are also over. No one wanted this for her. But no one wanted her to keep living the life she was living either. But no one wanted her to DIE for that to stop.

The changes in her personality over the last 5 or so years affected my life in a lot of really profound ways. As she became more tired, she circled the wagons. Suddenly our families were still close but we rarely saw each other. We lost our main support system and often felt very confused and lonely.

And as she became more anxious, she became more rigid. She went back to what she knew – a very old school, “my way or the highway” kind of approach to life. It was hard to watch – and probably very hard to live with – and likely what killed her. Instead of going and seeing specialists and new doctors, she trusted her familiar (negligent) local doctors and didn’t follow up when they found the first signs of cancer back in November of ’13. “Probably just a fatty liver” they said. By the time we realized they were wrong six months later, it was terminal.

And of course… when she got the terminal diagnosis, we had to stop our surrogacy plans with them. It was the only reasonable thing to do. And yeah, I have emotions about that. It may never have worked but it’s hard not to think, “what if we’d known” before we started. We could’ve found another surrogate. Yes it would’ve been very difficult. But we might have a child now. And of course, I’m not putting all on her. We all made decisions. But all our lives became wrapped up so tightly that it’s hard to know where one decision starts and another begins.

But mostly, I’ve been floored by how sad her passing has made me. We’ve been living in “how is she” mode for so many years that it kind of took the focus away from the actual – wow, she’s going to be GONE – thoughts. My husband and I had a really long, really hard talk last week after spending the weekend with her boys and he called me on a lot of things. He challenged me to put myself in her shoes and when I did, all the reasons why I love her came FLOODING back: her tenacity, her fierce love for her family, her humor, her generosity. Yes, she had been limited for the last few years but our relationship goes back over 21 years. And man, did we have some good times. And boy was she a wonderful person. Flawed like each and every one of us but my friend and – honestly – family member who I loved.

And finally, none of this (never mind those last 3 paragraphs) is about me. It's been an palpable challenge to think about what my friend and her family need and not what would make ME feel better. Every bone in my body wants to run to her side and walk through this with her. To be her helper, to make things better. But that's not what she wants. She wants space and the ability to make decisions on her own and the right to take her time with how she processes all this. And giving her that space has been an honest to god, hit you over the head, life lesson about how to not be self-centered. I've watched people in her life struggle with this in a variety of ways and it's not like any of us are getting it right. It's just actually painful to watch and to realize that wanting to help is more about you than it is about the person who is suffering. Yes, there are some things I can do. But honestly - not much. Life is so hard; and it's so long.