The art of surviving..living!

Summer is creeping up on us once again and three of us spent a very HOT Sunday afternoon celebrating cancer survivorship and promoting Santé at the Annual Bloch Cancer Survivor Event a couple weeks ago.
Meeting people who had been diagnosed decades ago and days ago, the most striking was the number of people who had experienced cancer several times.  As we visited with the attendees and read the buttons on each survivors shirt, the conversation turned to the “why’s” and “how’s” of cancer and who is touched.  “Why did the seven year-old boy live through his spinal cancer only to grow into his thirties and have brain cancer twice?”  Why did Mr. Jones live to be 92 while smoking a pack-a-day since he was 12, with nary a visit to the doctor?  Why did the marathon runner have to fight breast cancer only to be diagnosed with bladder cancer two years later?
There are no answers to these questions, but we continued to ask.  Realizing our own mortality, it was humbling to see the individuals who turned out on what might have otherwise been considered a “miserable” day.   A “cancer survivor” myself, I tend to have the attitude that I’ve “been there-done that” and “lightening only strikes once”.  But I know this is not the case and was strongly reminded that day. 
What we experienced that day was not to pity the men and women who had fought the cancer battle, but to join them in the joy of living in the moment.  As I have repeated for the last 17 years since my diagnosis, life is NOT a dress rehearsal, it IS the command performance.  We saw that in the faces and the determination of each survivor there that day.  Tomorrow is never promised, the only answer to the question is to live NOW!