The Hardest Lesson About Time

One of the things a cancer diagnosis teaches you is that time is not something you can take for granted. Before my diagnosis I lived with the confidence that my life stretched ahead in a predictable way, and that the people I cared about would be around for a long time yet.

Cancer unsettles that belief. It forced me to think about time differently. It made me appreciate time more. I am conscious of it and more anxious about wasting it.

But even though I have learnt this lesson, the sudden loss of a dear friend and work colleague has brought it home in a way that nothing else has. One moment she was part of the everyday rhythm of my working life, and the next she was gone. No warning, no chance to say goodbye - just a big gapping void, the shock of her absence and profound grief.

We had a function at work the night I was told she’d passed away. I had not long returned home when I got a call from one of my work partners. Little did I know when I answered that call that it was a moment that would divide my life into before and after. The words didn’t make sense to me. My first reaction was disbelief. Surely this was a mistake. Someone so vibrant, so alive, so present in my life could not simply vanish from it.

It is almost a month since I took that call and I am coming to terms with the fact that someone I cared about deeply will never appear in the everyday spaces she once filled. Everything at work reminds me of her. We worked together for 21 years. We were work partners for 12 years. She’s always been part of my life at the firm we had eventually come to lead together.

During my cancer treatment I spent a lot of time thinking about my mortality in the abstract. You cannot go through cancer without confronting death. The sudden loss of a friend is different though. It isn’t abstract at all. It is immediate, personal and impossibly sad. I feel heartbroken.

I miss her deeply. Her friendship was a gift in my life. I feel privileged to have worked with her, laughed with her, faced into adversity together and shared lots of lunches and glasses of wine over the years. We shared apartments at conferences, presented to clients, sang karaoke and attended awards dinners. I am grateful for all those moments. I wish I had appreciated them more and could have more of them.

Time turns out to be the most precious and the most uncertain thing we have. Cancer showed me that. Losing my friend has shown me again.

In the end all we can do is appreciate the people we share our lives with and the beautiful, ordinary days we get to spend with them.

For me the hardest lesson about time is learning not to assume there will always be more of it.

This song is for you my friend. ❤️

Ko te utu o te aroha, ko te mamae. The price of love is grief.