Life's not fair and neither is death

A high school classmate died today. And at my age, that's an unusual thing. It's not that our Class of '88 has been immune to death. No, it's actually seen more than its fair share it would seem, at least in our first couple decades of life. I can list several whom we've lost before we were 25: Marcus, Theron, Art, Angie, Ron, Kevin, Wesley, Dane, Leslie. There were vehicular accidents, cystic fibrosis, suicide, and more I'm sure. What's unsettling about this one is that it's the first I know of since we've entered the Facebook era. When we were still in school or freshly graduated, we all had ties to the community where we grew up so we at usually got word rapidly in that small town way of news traveling fast. In the intervening years, many of us ended up further from home, fewer connections to the hometown and when someone passed, the ripples of that stone hitting the water didn't seem to travel as far. And so it has seemed relatively calm on the death front for several years. Enter the Facebook era. I certainly enjoy it because you can keep up with what's going on with your classmates whom you otherwise would only hear about at 10-year intervals if you were lucky. It also brings the sobering news of things like personal tragedies, illnesses and death. One classmate earlier this year I learned had undergone heart bypass surgery. That he was my age was unsettling in its own right. What was more shocking was that from photos I'd seen, there was no way he was less healthy than me. Sure, there was a classmate who had been battling cancer for about three years. But it was cervical cancer and she had survived the initial onset pretty successfully. So between my not having a cervix and her relative success to date, it did not affect me like the bypass did. It was disheartening to learn that Amy, the classmate fighting cancer, had experienced another wave of the cancer. She reported it matter-of-factly as she'd have to go for CT scans and all manner of testing. Her close friends, whom she'd known since grade school, had coined a phrase for her battle. It was Kick Cancer's Ass! KCA for short. And Amy did just that. She did everything she could. I had classes with Amy. We didn't run in the same circles. She was part of a big group of girls who had grown up in our town, played in the band, went to church and, bluntly, they never had any more time for me than I had for them. I was a guy who wanted to be everything heavy metal in life and they certainly did not. Amy and her friends were just normal, straight up people who went about their lives. We just were different kind of people with some similar circumstances as to where we lived and went to school. That said, I can't remember Amy being anything other than just a decent person. She carried herself the way I would hope anyone would want their daughter to live - with a smile and surrounded by friends. I know many of those friends and all of them just adored Amy. They would likely sign up and say give me the cancer if they knew it would mean she would be rid of it. That's how close they kept for decades. I have but one friend like that. In the years since I've been Facebook friends with Amy, I've noticed how non-plussed she always seems in her posts about her illness. She was always very positive, determined and simply treating the cancer as a phase that would one day pass. And it did today. She finally shed the body with cancer and went to a place where she'll never feel pain again. And that's a beautiful thing. I can only think of her husband and two daughters who will have to wait to see her again and the pain they must feel. What was most shocking for me was how abrupt the end came for Amy - at least to those of us who only got updates via Facebook. Only a couple weeks ago she was having a drainage tube removed from her lungs and in her own words said she felt like she had "finally turned a corner." The circumstances of her passing I'm neither privy to, nor do I need them. All I can say is that in some ways, it can be a blessing to not have a prolonged struggle that goes on for months or years. An uncle of mine who died of cancer told me shortly after he stopped the experimental treatment he had been getting that he would rather his children know the man they saw die than some shell of who he had been. Amy, as I knew here, lived her life as much as she could and showed her two daughters that fighting doesn't have to be pitiful. She was dutiful in how she took her treatments, dealt with the pain and other effects, and never lost her identity. I know her friends certainly held her up for prayer and that the love she received was never, ever taken for granted. I wasn't close to Amy and never would suggest we were - but I can tell you I prayed for her recovery and kept her in my thoughts frequently. Because I was so impressed with how she faced the challenge and because I knew there was absolutely no way she ever deserved it. No one really ever does. I wear a Livestrong bracelet every day because cancer has affected many people in my life, including Amy. It could have been me, my wife, my sister or my mother. But it wasn't. Yet that didn't let me simply think, that's so sad, and then go along with my life. I wrote to Amy and told her that I truly admired her. I still do. These kinds of things will probably begin to happen more frequently with my peers now that we're getting older and entering new phases in our lives. It will never be easy, nor will it be welcome. We can only face like Amy did - with grace and dignity.