Life's a Bitch

My heart is breaking for my close family friends. Their son (who is only 18) is dying from Chordoma...benign tumors that grow rapidly around the brain and spinal cord. As of this week, he is no longer able to swallow foods...and as a result, he has made the decision for himself NOT to have a feeding tube put in. He has requested a 'do not resuscitate' order. He told his parents hes ready. To be 18 and ready to die? How terrifying a thought. I remember him as a baby when he was born. My mother and his mother have known eachother since they were kids. And now shes losing her kid. It feels like it goes against everything I know, everything I believe in. I believe in science, and nature and people doing good and being good to one another...and that some way or another, everyone will eventually get whats coming to them...good or bad. Karma? not really, as a dont believe in god, or a higher power...I guess I just hoped that was the way the world worked, that nature would take its course and make things right. Guess not...which I suppose is WHY I've never been a believer. Because, as much as we all want to feel like if we are good people, something will come our way in return, it doesnt usually turn out that way. Sometimes life is full of shit. What could an 18 year old kid have done in his life to deserve an early grave like this? Nothing! This kid worked his ass off in highschool, despite the fact that he had this illness...took several months off from school to be home schooled in a hospital bed in Boston...and STILL gradutated at the top of his class...on time! For what? What was it worth? He got into a great college, that he will never get to go to, because instead...hes going to die at home on Long Island He'll never have the chance to go out and act like a drunken fool, to get laid at a party and perhaps regret it the next day, to fail a course, to meet a girl and fall in love....he'll never get to experience the silly things we take for granted each day...because in the next two weeks, he will die...in his bed, at home...with his parents staying by his side every single moment. For what? thats all I keep asking myself. Whats the point of it all? Are we learning some grand lesson from all of this? I've learned enough lessons to last me a lifetime. I've been through cancer in my family 3 times! Divorce! Car accidents, Brain injuries, murder suicides! And wheres the lesson? what will his family and close friends have to gain from this experience of watching their loved one die a young death? NOTHING.

When I was very young, young enough not to take it seriously...my mother taught me the most important lesson I could have ever learned. LIFE IS NOT FAIR. Thats what she told me, and she made sure to tell me when I was young. And at that young age I laughed. But its not funny. In fact, theres nothing funny about it...because its completely true. Bad people have good things happen to them, good people have bad things happen to them, bad experiences dont neccessarily carry a life lesson with them, and good experiences dont always last. Maybe thats what we have to really learn...all of us. Life simply isnt fair, and theres nothing that you or I can do to change that. We can look for the lessons, look for the words to heal ourselves and others, but sometimes they just dont exist. Nothing is there to be learned, and nothing is there to be said. In all reality, whomever was the first to say it may have really hit the nail on the head....Life's a bitch, and then you die.