Today, while taking my partner’s mother, Leri, for a walk in the hospital—she has advanced, stage 4 cancer—we found a wig store. We went inside.
The manager, a survivor of breast cancer herself, didn’t pay attention to Leri’s impossibly thin body or her wrinkled hospital gown. She just smiled and invited her to sit in the salon chair, where she began helping her try on all manner of perfectly coiffed wigs. Finally, she landed on one that looked like it was made for her—brown, shoulder length and tapered in the back.
Leri stared in the mirror, shocked with happiness. She hasn’t had much hair for almost a year—and what’s there has turned grey and straggly.
We bought it and she wore it back to her room, head held high, feeling like a whole human being again—and even if that feeling lasted only a few fleeting moments, it was worth it.
Because that’s what life is: a million fleeting moments.
Sometimes so beautiful it feels your heart might explode. Yet so heartbreaking you wonder how to go on.
Until we learn how to allow the beauty to co-exist for us alongside the heartbreak (and the heartbreak to co-exist alongside the beauty), we are only half alive.
