Life really is this fragile. I’ve said it, I’ve seen it, I’ve known it, but now I am experiencing it. Sometimes it’s hard to accept that one tiny cell is tearing me apart. Being vocal about it helps. Every emotion I have has a purpose in this, even the negative ones. Now is not the time for silence.

All of our lives intersect somehow, somewhere, all seven billion of us. Even if we don’t know each other, even if we’re on different continents. The same things happen to every single one of us: we’re born, we live, we die. Death truly is the great equalizer.

When Amelia first asked if having cancer made me think about my own mortality, I immediately said no without even thinking. It was a 100% scared and reactive response, a denial of the true worst case scenario. There are things you don’t want to speak out loud or hear, words like metastasis. And words like brain, bone, liver, and lungs: those are the words that make you think of your own mortality. Those are the words I don’t want to hear. Those are the common places HER2 positive breast cancer likes to spread to.

Amelia and I are opposites in many ways. She is incredibly comfortable with death. She’s worked with death on many levels from toddlers to the elderly. I often call her a Guide to Death, because that is exactly what she is. She is the person you want around in medical situations. I am not so comfortable with death, but I’m much more comfortable than I used to be because of Amelia’s incredible perspective.

I can admit now that cancer does make me think about death. I realize that nothing is mine. I possess nothing. Everything I think I own will sooner or later belong to someone else: my house, my clothes, my truck, my banjo, my furniture. Some of these things already belonged to other people who are long since dead. It really is a circle of life and death, and in between we’re just borrowing time. Does it sound like I’m at peace with it? I’m not.