My 40th High School Reunion is this year. Somehow, I was asked to be on the reunion committee 10 years ago for the 30th reunion. I agreed to be the administrator for our reunion Facebook group. One of the things I did besides helping people reminisce was to acknowledge birthdays. People liked it, a lot of us had fun at the 30th reunion, and I kept celebrating birthdays. I was surprised at how appreciated it was by people, these small acts of kindness. Consequently, I have kept posting about my classmates’ birthdays for the last 10 years.

I was contacted by one of the heads of the reunion committee to ask if I would continue my role as reunion promoter for our 40th reunion. Given my health risks, the fact that I have no one who can cover for me at work if I get sick, and the fact that I work with kids who are also at high risk for severe or long Covid, I avoid crowded indoor gatherings. And knowing that there are Trump supporters who are likely to attend the reunion, I don’t want to get harassed for wearing a mask.

I told the reunion committee member that I was happy to help, regardless, but that my attendance was going to depend on the venue, basically, whether it was indoors or outdoors. Her response was, “You have to come! You’re our girl! You deserve to be there!”

I had breast cancer in 2012 and two heart attacks in the space of 8 days caused by Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) in 2017. I didn’t expect these diseases at the ages I was, 46 and 51 years, respectively. Treatment, recovery, and facing my mortality was painful and scary. I try to live my life with the awareness that time is precious.

What I don’t think about is whether I deserved the illnesses or whether doing ten years of birthday greetings on FB somehow protects me from disease exposure because I deserve to be there.

I stopped believing in divine intervention decades ago. People get sick and die, people who don’t deserve it. Babies, children, families, refugees, living in all kinds of harrowing internal and external environments of famine, disease, violence, and war.

Everyone gets sick. Everyone dies. It is true that some suffer more than others but none of this is about deserving, except for people who’s basic rights to live without violence, with good food, clean water, access to medicine, are violated.

For the rest of us, it is just about the body, its capacity for life and healing as well as its capacity for sickness and death. Loss is painful and at times devastating. But there are many types of losses that are the normal.

In cancer recovery, we often speak of the “new normal”. It is a useful concept for many. When I got cancer, I worked with an psychologist who had a lot of experience with people facing physical illness. I told her that I not only wanted support through my cancer assessment and treatment but that I wanted to work hard to prevent depression or experiencing traumatic stress. Her main recommendation was to integrate my cancer experience into the rest of my life and to not compartmentalize it. She noted that people who try to shut off potentially traumatic experience from the rest of their lives, are more likely to get depressed or traumatized.

I can only speak for myself, but I found that accepting cancer as part of my life, writing nearly daily about my experiences with cancer assessment, cancer treatment, and my day-to-day life to be very healing. I don’t mean that it wasn’t painful. I experienced all of the grief emotions. I mean that my grief process was one that brought forth acceptance and healing. I drew on this when I got sick again.

Death and illness, life and healing, anger and happiness, joy and sadness, growth and decline, anxiety and equanimity, all of these things are part of the oldest normal.

Be well, friends.

P.S. The reunion has outdoor opportunities, so don’t worry about whether I can attend or not.