The prognosis does not look good. She was put on life support, and she will most likely not make it back out of the hospital. But, this woman is a warrior. And when I say warrior, I mean that she has fought all of her life. This woman has had the worst possible circumstances that you could imagine.
And yet, she smiled. And when she is your friend, your life is better for having her with you.
Her best quality is her capacity for unconditional love. Sometimes we are intentionally or unintentionally jerks. Even if the people around her were awful … and some of them were … she loved. Loved and loved. She could really teach you something about what it means to love. Her capacity for love was because she forgave everyone for their trespasses.
Even me. Because when you are friends with someone for a very long time, you commit trespasses. I was a jerk. I am a jerk. That’s just life.
She asked me to stay with her when she got the medication that would put her to sleep for the intubation procedure. The risk of this medication is that it had a high likelihood of stopping her heart. I learned that it isn’t really like the House episodes, where the doctors on that show intubate each and every episode. This is real. And with people who are sick, it can be a fatal procedure.*
That meant that it was very likely I would never talk to my friend again.
The life lesson that I learned yesterday is that you can have the worst possible circumstances, but you can still find joy and happiness. You can still smile. You can mean something to someone else. Forgive. Love unconditionally, even when people are jerks.
No matter what happens over the next few days, I know this. We will see each other again, my friend. I know you will be there waiting for me at my end, just like I was here for yours.
* It was touch and go for a while, but she made it through the intubation procedure. Now we wait.
