God Willing

“Blindsided once again by life.”

January 2022

While trying to keep my feet firmly on solid writing ground as I wrote The Deafening Sound of Sorrow and holding steady to my position of retiring in the spring I was once again blindsided by life. This time by anger with the death of one of my dearest and closest friends.

She was the “poster child” for health and wellness. She never smoked or did drugs, barely drank, and would annoyingly research each and every morsel of food she popped into her mouth. It was absolutely mind blowing to me that she would be the first in my close-knit circle of friends to die unexpectantly. Not from Covid-19 but from that other world-wide pandemic that is rarely described as such, cancer.

I can honestly write that she was a beautiful person, both inside and out. We met at the power plant and had become close friends for almost twenty years and, like most good friendships; we didn’t always see eye to eye on things. Regardless, I respected her quirky health regimes, her strong religious convictions, and steadfast spiritual beliefs, even though they rarely aligned with my own. Throughout our friendship years, I had witnessed her unwavering faith in God, which in the end gave her the strength to ultimately refuse any offerings of conventional modern medical treatments to battle the cancer that raged deep inside her. Her religious beliefs would be what steered her and kept her on her journey of hope and healing.

There were many moments over the last few months of her life that I had to bite down hard on my tongue as she would vehemently refused chemotherapy or “that god-awful” radiation. Forced to silence my selfishness—in trying to keep her in my life for as long as possibly—while having to balance her wishes against my own. Looking back, I truly wished she would have changed her mind. I truly wish that I had screamed at her, maybe even bullied her small frail seventy-pound frame—taking advantage of her physical weakness. Or, maybe I should have fallen on my knees in front of her begging her to at least try the conventional medicines that—God willing—had cured so many others.

Deep down, I admired my beautiful friend, right up until her very end. But it took me a long time to forgive her—choosing to hold onto my anger towards her instead—long after she was gone.

To me, she couldn’t see all the miracles that God had given to this world to help us fight the good fight against cancer. Didn’t God in some way shape or form create modern medicine? Didn’t God guide the people in his flock and lead them down a righteous path to become healers, oncologists, nurses, or surgeons? Instead, she chose to use what little strength she had left in her cancer ridden body to put all her trust in her almighty God, “who would cast out her cancer and cure her” in due time. Well, her due time on this earth quickly ran out.

It would be a year before I sat down and cried the tears of grief and loss that I owed our friendship. Sometimes, when I take the time to listen, I can still hear her voice cheering me on. I really do miss her.

My forever beautiful friend’s death at the tender young age of fifty-three would only strengthen my resolve with my rash decision to retire early from my great paying job. Which made me even more determined to give my writing dream my all with whatever due time I had left on this earth—God willing.

Coming up next: What Happened Next? (spoiler alert: The truth, as only I can remember remembering it.)