Cancer Ivy

When we were younger a group of us, we gathered on the weekends and went clubbing. We got crazy, but we had a blast, and paid for it the following day. One of my friends was diagnosed with colon cancer. This doesn't happen to us; it's always the other person. The shock of having to face surgery, chemotherapy, the sick days, and the dread of losing hair and energy. I saw the struggles she was going through physically, and emotionally. Some of us started staying away from her; they just couldn't face her or didn't know what to say. Not realizing it hurt her mentally. She handled the cancer by joking around; at the end it ruptured. Before she died, she gathered all of us at one of our favorite clubs and had a celebration of life. She’d written and read her own eulogy. We cried, laughed, and joked about our past. At her funeral we read the eulogy she had written, at the end she had added, “Now go out, have fun, and get drunk on me.” 6/17/2021 true story