An ‘Aggressive Love for Life’ Regardless of Life’s Challenges
I’m not an anti-aging person. I’m not a person who believes in the ‘dilution of the gene pool’ as people call it. I am not against science. I am not against the idea that we do not have the right to our own bodies, just as anyone else does. And I am not against people talking to each other about end of life care. I do not believe strongly in a religion that mandates death by euthanasia.
But I do believe in love. I believe in love as a way to get through life with my loved ones. And I do believe in love as a way to fight back when some people don’t think we have the right to life or the right to love. Love is an ‘aggressive’ thing. It is not the same as being against the concept of life itself.
I’m a life-long romantic, and I’ve been married for more than 35 years. I was a student nurse, then a mid-life crisis after my husband was diagnosed with leukemia. I had to be a single mother with four kids. And before long I knew it could not go on forever. I was married to him for 27 years.
That’s how it was for many people who were diagnosed with cancer.
But I was not one of them.
People were making all kinds of plans for their lives in terms of working and doing. And yet the disease took over in my body and in my children’s bodies. My husband never made any plans, but his illness made him vulnerable and afraid.
My doctor said that he would not die. He would just live for another 5-7 months, he thought. We never talked about living together again in our life together. And I told him that life was just to short of thinking about it, and that once it was over, he could move on with his life.
And that is the way it was for me and for many, many people who were diagnosed with cancer.
I just did not want it to end. I guess that’s why I’m an