A Letter to this Insidious Disease

This morning, I woke up heavy with the news of my friend’s death. Another friend gone too soon, another life stolen by the same insidious disease I live with every day. His absence sits like a stone in my chest, and it leaves me with a few choice words for the enemy we share.

I don’t usually write with anger but today feels different. Today I need to speak directly to the disease itself.

Letter to the Disease

You’ve taken too much from me already. My strength. My freedom. My time. You’ve stolen days I can’t get back, hours that could have been spent in the places and with the people I love. You’ve taken friends, too—some lost to your cruelty, some pushed away by the shadow you cast. That theft cuts as deep as any physical pain.

You’ve taken time, but I will spend more than I have—lavishly, defiantly, with no thought of conserving it for you.

You may control the length of the road I’m traveling, but you will never dictate how I walk it. I will choose to saunter, to pause for the view, to feel the sun and wind and rain. You might make my body weaker, but you will not make my spirit or my mind weak. Those are mine, and you can’t touch them.

You try to fill my days with uncertainty, helplessness, and the need for support. And yes, I feel those things. But here’s the truth—you’ve forced me to understand life better. You’ve shown me that uncertainty isn’t yours alone to give; it has always been part of living. Limitations will happen, with or without you. The difference is that now I see them clearly, and I find ways to move through them.

And when I reach out for help—something you thought would be my humiliation—I am actually letting people in. You don’t understand what that does for me, how it builds me, how it deepens the ties you wanted to sever.

So, take what you will. I’ll use what’s left to keep walking this path my way. I will not be small for you. I will not go silent. And on my last day, you will still not have me.

Until then, here’s what I have to say to you: 🖕

For my friend,

You took him, but you don’t get to erase him. You don’t get to touch the memories of our friendship, the laughter we shared, or the way his life mattered to mine. His passing is one more reason I will keep sauntering down this road my way.

For every name you’ve claimed, I will speak it. For every friend you’ve stolen, I will remember them in the living, breathing light of my days. You may shorten the road, but you cannot decide how I travel it—or who I carry with me along the way.

💭 Reflection: Cancer has a way of making us feel powerless, but today I choose defiance. Not the kind that denies reality, but the kind that insists on living my way in the face of it. Gerry deserved that, and so do I.