What if I Die…..?

……The moment I made the switch in my mind from thoughts of death to determination to live.

What if I die? This question had crossed my mind in the very beginning when I received my diagnosis. How could it not? Isn’t that normal? Wouldn’t you think the same? After I had cried bucket loads of tears, over a period of a couple of weeks, and my mind was clearer and more focused, I went into my office and created a ‘personal effects’ folder, with information such as website passwords, my bank details, all my personal information, one place where someone could go and retrieve this sort of information including my finances, in case I died, in an effort to make their life easier if the unthinkable did happen. 

I would imagine people’s opinion on death is split, perhaps not evenly. I would hazard a guess that most people think that experiencing death too soon is a really scary thought and have a crippling fear of it, and some will be entirely ok with the concept, knowing in their heart of hearts that when their time is up, when it’s curtains for them, when the grim reaper comes a-knocking (only the naughty, badly behaved people!), that it is divine timing and they are ok with that, feel peaceful about it, accepting their fate with grace. I am not going to lie, I was scared shitless at the start of my ‘big C’ journey!

I’ve always thought the end of my life would be in my ‘old age’, the age that is considered not too early to be taken to the ‘pearly gates’, an age that is considered acceptable to go, when people say at my funeral, ‘she lived a full life, she had a good innings’. But when those four horrid words were muttered by the specialist, “you’ve got breast cancer”, how long I thought I would live was potentially brought forward by a few years and I had to come face to face with the concept of not living a full life to what is classed as ‘old age’. My demise was brought to the forefront of my mind. And for a short period of time the idea stayed there, filling my mind with worry and anguish and flooding my heart with sadness. That harrowing thought was not something I wanted to continue feeling, and actually more for my son, an innocent child, who is 5 years old and needs me, especially with his diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I don’t want him to be left without me. I want to stick around so I can guide him through life, to help him navigate through the struggles he may encounter, help him understand things which will, no doubt, be harder for him than if he had a neurotypical brain. 

So, there was the moment, two weeks after my diagnosis when, having digested the news and cried enough tears to create the Pacific Ocean #2, my whole mindset changed. My fighting spirit kicked in and that is when I said to myself, “Abbie, nothing can take you down without your permission. Put up your best fight and don’t EVER back down’. I wasn’t going to let cancer win.

So, fast forward a couple of months and this brings me to the time when a friend and I were out walking, walking and talking…..oh, haven’t we all got good at walking, by the way? It’s one of the only things we’ve been ‘allowed’ to do for so long now isn’t it? What with Covid-19 making its appearance last year. I’m sure we’ve all become expert walkers. On that note, have you ever studied how people walk? I have. You’ve got the tiny steppers, the huge striders, and what about the ones who walk with really enthusiastic arm movements, their hips jolting from side to side; it’s quite an animated look isn’t it? Just shy of running, not quite fast enough to run but walking very, very fast. It’s fascinating to watch. I LOVE a bit of ‘people watching’, don’t you? In a park, on the beach or when waiting at the station for the already late train to be even later; anywhere that is a public really…..Oh I love it! I always wonder what people’s lives are like when I’m people watching. Is it because I’m nosy? Or just interested in people? I have always wondered…..

Anyway, back to the conversation with my friend. We were chatting about my upbeat mindset living with cancer (interestingly…..when I first typed ‘living’ it came out as ‘loving’, I guess that is exactly what I’m doing…loving life although I’ve got cancer). Anyway, see below how our conversation went:

My friend: “Your optimistic mindset seems to have taken an exponential leap since your breast cancer diagnosis. I’ve always known you to put a positive slant on things in your day-to-day life; it all seems to have been kicked into overdrive now though.

Me: “Yes, indeed. I think when the chips are down and something very serious and potentially life threatening happens, you are backed into a corner and forced into making a choice how to react, or more appropriately, how to respond to what’s happening. And I chose to up my game and adopt an attitude that nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to keep me from surviving this and living to tell the tale. I also have an unwavering faith, in my mind, and a strong fighting spirit, and getting through this will actually help my physical body to respond to that”.

“When you’re feeling brave and invincible, your body is making neuropeptides similar to Interleukin 2, which is one of the most powerful chemical to fight cancer cells.”

                                                Credit: ‘Quantum Healing’ written by Deepak Chopra MD

My friend: “I wish I had the same mindset as you in life generally, and I can see that when it’s a huge life changing issue you almost have no choice but to gain more strength, but I wouldn’t wish anything drastic like this, something life threatening to turn up in my life, to have that firm belief and faith instilled into my brain”.

I was actually stumped by my friend’s statement. I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t really a question but I still wanted to know how to answer it. I thought it was an interesting statement, nonetheless and wanted to provide her with some insight. Why does something as serious as cancer need to happen, and for a possible early death to be brought to the forefront of one’s mind, to really turn things around and start to live life with purpose? So I asked my sister, my mentor, Vanessa, how she would answer that. Her words were profound and ‘spoke’ to me!

Vanessa’s first words were….”Well, we are all going to die at some point, we are all living our own lives but the very end is death for us all whether now or in years to come!” And that was it, I understood exactly what she meant.

So, my answer to my friend was what my sister said above followed by, “A possible early demise has been presented to me but it hasn’t been presented to you. We shouldn’t need a big negative life happening to encourage us to live life to the full NOW. We should make the choice to enjoy the journey of life, with an abundant mindset and overcoming adversity attitude. We can choose to live that way anyway, every day, can’t we? It’s just a choice. It’s quite simple really”. And for the reason that my sister, Vanessa, said. We are all heading towards the same end, some at different times, but the same end nevertheless. Enjoy life’s process with love in your heart. You never know when your time is up. 

Let me use this analogy to explain further what I’m trying to say……
If you picture a seashore (in fact, let’s picture the Pacific Ocean #2 that I created with the tears I cried just after my diagnosis!!) and in that expanse of water there are different variants of seaweed. My seaweed had come floating to the surface whereas others, without a life threatening disease and a potential early death to contend with, may have their seaweed bobbing about on the sea bed. My seaweed is more visible to the eye but it doesn’t mean that other people‘s seaweed isn’t there. It’s just not as obvious to see. 

Trauma that I’ve experienced, life threatening news like I have had, seems to ‘wake you up’. So, yes, I mustered up a strength I never knew I had, adopted an attitude that perhaps was hiding under the surface that has only now been recognised, acknowledged and stamped in my brain! A super power that I thought only She-Ra possessed but it has always been there, it’s just gone a little bit more unnoticed like the seaweed on the sandy seabed. 

I also made the choice to enjoy the process of something that could potentially kill me….I’m sure that sounds very odd to hear! I’ve laughed a lot, adding humour into the way I cope has really helped too. It has certainly made the whole process easier to handle by looking at it in a more lighthearted kind of way. It’s certainly not a trivial issue but I’ve decided to see it that way in my mind’s eye.

My healing, which, in my mind, will happen by the way, will be the proof that this ‘stuff’ works. This mindfulness is not a waste of time. So, it just so happens that getting cancer has given me the playground to play with this stuff. It has encouraged me to make an inspired choice, to trust the process of life. And as I mentioned earlier, I’m a true believer that a combination of an overcoming attitude and positive thoughts can have a profound effect on our physical bodies.

On the subject of trusting life’s process, there’ll be twists and turns on the journey of life, and trusting that it’s all set out and designed for us, and that everything will work out in the end, is tough to do sometimes. We just have to trust that it will. Here are a couple of analogies….like the bumpers, rails or barriers down a bowling alley that are surrounding a lane for when it is a child’s turn to bowl to prevent the balls from going into the gutters. The bowling ball always bounces back into the main drag of the alley and is more likely to hit the pins. Or the guided missile, it goes off course a lot but always hits its target.

And when trusting life’s process, take this hypothetical situation…..Just imagine you are on the edge of a cliff. Someone is there with you, standing a couple of feet away, saying, “I am going to push you off the edge of this cliff. Your ‘wings’ will open after 5 seconds and save you, give you a soft landing.” Do you trust that everything is going to work out well, have a good outcome, and jump anyway? Will you take that risk in your mind and believe that everything will be ok? 

I truly believe that out of my greatest despair has come my greatest gift of life, a whole new perspective, a complete trust in life’s process for me. 

So, going back to my friend’s observation about wanting to have the attitude I do about overcoming adversity but without having to adopt this way of thinking as a result of traumatic news like mine, why wait until you’re forced to have the thoughts that death could potentially come early? We are all going to die at some point anyway so make a choice to be happy NOW, live life to the full NOW. You don’t need to wait until your seaweed floats to the surface of the seashore.

#belikeabbie