We’re All Going to Live

Day one of your clinical rotation as a hospital chaplain your first patient is a woman in her 50’s, admitted just hours before. What she assumed was pneumonia is late-stage lung cancer. She wants to speak with you before calling her husband. 

She’s angry. This can’t be true. She takes care of herself: non-smoker, exercises, a kale enthusiast, just an occasional glass of wine with dinner. 

A universal vulnerability-that none of us can unzip our skins and know what’s going on inside. That all the kale in the world gives no one such a vantage point.

Three hours pass. “I’m going to fight this,” she says. “I’m going to live.” She looks at you squarely, believe me.

You try. But you don’t.

You’ve talked to her doctors. You’ve read her medical chart. You know it’s grim and so does she. You hold her hand while she calls her husband.

She’s discharged two days later, her story lost to you. Years down the line you’re stretching before an exercise class and she walks in. 

You embrace. You cry. Because you were wrong. Because yes, all of us are going to die, but all of us are going to live