Just a few minutes ago, I called a good friend who  lives far away and is battling cancer. Her voice was hoarse, and she sounded exhausted. Her doctors have switched her chemo attempting to arrest the growth of several tumors. Needless to say her prognosis is grim.

Cancer is a part of my life. My husband fought lymphoma a few years ago and is in remission. He is a pediatric oncologist and a researcher so he deals with this disease every day: in the lab, in the clinic, in the hospital. He has  a scan coming up soon. We both put our awareness of this test in a little box in our brains and shut the door. For a while, the clinic would call the house and remind him of the test. It was a robo call and since I am the one who answers the phone and listens to messages, that was how I learned of the scan. He would not tell me otherwise. When he realized that the robo reminders were coming to the home phone, he deleted the home number and put in his cell. Then I never knew when the scans were happening. But tonight he told me about the upcoming scan.

But that is not really what this freewrite is about. Generally, I do not write about these sorts of things — too melodramatic, too emotional, too revealing. But this disease frightens me. People can be sick with cancer and not know it for years. Not know it until they feel tired, or have a cough that won’t go away, or feel a lump, or can’t catch their breath, or have an unexplained pain. Or maybe they don’t even know they have stage 4 CA until they go to some regular doctor visit and Wow! look at what the blood test shows; Wow! see what the physical exam reveals. Cancer can kill you without any sign. Why is that so much scarier than heart disease? or old age?

I am also afraid of Alzheimer’s. What a terrible idea to lose your mind and know that you are losing it and what the progress of the disease will do to your family. I will not go see that movie “Still Alice.” No way. Too near to home. A linguistics professor who loses it. I have trouble remembering names. Is that an early symptom?

Actually what this freewrite is about is the factual reality that my life is half over. At 50 years of age, I am unlikely to make it to 100. Not sure I want to be 100 anyway seeing the bad shape my grandma is in with her brittle bones. So the midway of my life is here (probably happened a few years ago but went by unremarked). What should I do with the time left? Am I doing what I love every day? Or doing at least one thing that I love every day? What will I leave behind when I die? Children, yes. But anything else of value? No, not really.

We all die. We “rage, rage against the dying of the light” as Dylan Thomas says in “Fern Hill.” We fear this end point; however, there is no guarantee for anything after this life. No guarantee at all — unless you have a faith but even strong faith has moments of doubt.

My friend who is so sick meets her mortality each day. She sees it in the mirror when she looks at her wispy tufts of hair before she hides her baldness under a hat. She sees it in her thin arms and legs, without muscle and so she sways as she shuffles down the hall. Not all of us see this. We are not a culture any more of memento mori. Not like Dante who wrote about how he became lost in the woods “midway upon the journey of our life.” Dante knew about death. He knew about the fear of it. But we bury it and deny it. I buried it and denied it. But no longer. Not now more than midway upon the journey of my life.