When the Strongest Person You Know Gets Sick

    

    I’ve been holding a lot in lately. Words I don’t know how to say out loud. Emotions that come in waves — sometimes steady, sometimes like a tidal wave that knocks the wind out of me. And maybe that’s why I’m writing this. Because sometimes the only way to untangle what’s happening inside is to put it somewhere outside of you.

Someone I love more than life itself — my grandmother — was recently diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer. Even typing those words doesn’t feel real. It’s the kind of news you always think happens to someone else’s family. But this time, it’s mine.

She isn’t just my grandmother. She’s my person. My first best friend, my safe place, my anchor. I was her first grandchild, and from the moment I was born, there’s always been this bond between us that no one else could quite touch.

When I was little, she’d swing with me on the hammock in her backyard, singing songs until the stars came out. Even now, I can hear the sound of her voice if I close my eyes. She sang to me when I was scared. She sang to me when the world felt too big. She sang to remind me I was never alone.

And she meant it.

There were times in my life when things got really hard — harder than I can put into words — and she was always there. When I didn’t have water at my place, she made sure I had clean clothes and a safe space. When life felt like it was crumbling around me, she reminded me we’d make it through together. I never felt small or unimportant in her home. I never felt like a burden.

Some of my best memories happened under her roof, even when I was a headstrong, emotional teenager trying to shut out the world. There was peace in her house. A calm I haven’t found many other places since. I’d give anything to be that kid again — sneaking into her pool for the tenth time in a day, making up excuses just to stay a little longer.

And now… now I’m faced with the terrifying possibility of a life where I don’t get to do that anymore.

She’s still here. She’s still fighting. She’s still strong and sharp and stubborn in all the best ways. But watching someone you love go through something like this — the endless tests, the scary conversations, the days when everything feels uncertain — it does something to you. It makes you confront the things you’ve spent your whole life pretending you’d never have to face.

And the truth is, I don’t know how to process it. I don’t know what the right way to show up is when you’re afraid. I don’t know how to quiet the part of me that wants to fix it when I know I can’t.

But what I do know is this: time is precious, and the people we love deserve to be cherished while they’re here, in this moment, not someday later when we realize how quickly things can change. You don’t wait until someone is gone to tell them how much they mean to you. You don’t wait to make memories. You don’t wait to sit beside them on the porch, or dive into a cold pool together, or sing an old song just because it makes you both smile.

If you’re reading this — please, don’t wait.

Call your grandmother. Hug your mom. Text your best friend just to say you love them. Take the trip. Share the laugh. Be somebody’s safe place while you can.

I don’t have a tidy ending for this. No perfect bow to wrap it up with. Because real life isn’t like that. There’s no instruction manual for how to navigate the grief that comes before loss, the fear that settles in your chest when someone you love is hurting, and the way your world feels like it tilts off its axis.

But what I do have is love. Endless, stubborn, unconditional love for one of the most resilient, beautiful, strong-willed people I’ve ever known.

And for now, that will have to be enough.