Death and Dying Are Not the Same

Most people fear death.

Of course they do.

Life is precious. It’s expression, connection, movement, purpose. It’s laughter with your children, coffee in the morning, the smell of summer, the comfort of routine, the hope of what’s still ahead. No matter what season of life we’re in, there is something in all of us that wants more of it.

More time.

More love.

More life.

But just as much as we fear death, we also forget to fully live.

We take so much for granted. That’s human nature. Until mortality enters the room. Until life is no longer something assumed, but something fragile. Once that happens, everything changes. There is a cloud that follows you, one that makes every ordinary thing feel either more beautiful or more heartbreaking.

When I was first diagnosed back in 2020, there was so much reassurance around me that I was going to be okay. So much confidence from everyone else that I almost missed the gravity of what had happened to me. I was angry. I blamed. I resisted. I looked at what was happening through the lens of inconvenience and fear instead of gratitude.

The truth is, I had been given bad news. And somehow, I had also been given another chance.

I should have been grateful from that moment on.

But I wasn’t. Not fully. Not yet.

The summer after my hysterectomy, my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Completely unrelated to my situation, but somehow deeply tied to it all the same. That was the moment panic entered the room for all of us. News like that is impossible to absorb unless you’ve lived it. People say things. They offer hope. They tell you to stay strong. But unless you’ve looked mortality in the face yourself, you don’t really understand what those words are sitting on top of.

I understand that now.

There is one sentence my mom said to me that I will never forget.

She was helping me through several surgeries while I had a six-week-old newborn, and she looked at me and said:

“I would do anything to take this from you.”

Those words haunted me the day she was diagnosed.

My mom was one of those people who loved without limits. She would give you the shirt off her back, the food off her plate, her time, her energy, her heart, whatever you needed, she would find a way to give it. She was endlessly selfless. It was one of the most beautiful things about her.

But I have thought so much about the cost of that kind of love.

What happens when someone gives so much of themselves away that there is very little left for them?

What happens when a woman spends her entire life caring for everyone else, but never really learns how to choose herself?

She loved so deeply. But I often wonder if she ever really knew how to save any of that love for herself.

And still, she was joy.

Especially once she became a grandmother.

There was nothing more healing for her than my boys. Logan, then later Wally and Victor, gave her something medicine never could. They gave her light. They gave her purpose. They gave her a reason to keep imagining more life.

That’s why I wanted so badly for her to live.

Not just survive.

Not just exist.

But truly live.

She came to live with me right before Victor was born. It was meant to be a chance for healing. Better healthcare. More support. More joy. A home full of laughter and purpose and children and possibility.

And then, in the middle of all of that, my own diagnosis came.

Suddenly, here we both were.

A mother and daughter, both staring down the unimaginable.

That was the moment I understood something I had only brushed against before:

When death feels close, life becomes sacred in a way it never was before.

You realize how badly you want to stay.

How deeply you want to watch your children grow up.

How much you still want to love your spouse.

How much of yourself you still haven’t fully lived yet.

And in the fear of death, you are given an opportunity:

To choose life.

I chose it.

Not because I wasn’t afraid.

But because I was.

I chose to believe. I chose to face what was in front of me and become more alive in the middle of it. She introduced me to Dispenza, and for that I will always be grateful. That seed changed me.

But one of the hardest things for me to witness was that she could see possibility for me in a way she never seemed to be able to fully claim for herself.

My sister said something to me recently that I don’t think I will ever forget:

“She always believed you could, but she never thought she could.”

And that broke me.

Because I think that was true.

I watched fear live inside her.

Not all the time. Not in every moment. But enough.

Enough that I could feel the grief of all the life she still wanted.

She was 61 when she was diagnosed. I was 35. And it doesn’t matter if you are 35 or 61 or 85 — when you love your life, you still want more of it.

Watching her fear death made me fight harder against my own.

I had to.

Because I could see so clearly what happens when the fear of death starts stealing your life before death even gets there.

When her disease progressed to the point where there was no more relief, we were given the devastating words no family ever wants to hear:

“There is nothing else we can do for you.”

And what shattered me most was that in that moment, she finally said:

“I’m now ready to fight.”

There are no words for how tragic that feels.

Because this is the part no one talks about enough:

Death and dying are not the same thing.

Death can sound abstract, even peaceful. A crossing. A release. A spiritual concept.

But dying is different.

Dying is physical. It is slow. It is humbling. It is the unraveling of the body while the soul is still trying to make sense of it. It is the most brutal thing I have ever witnessed from a distance and carried in my body all at once.

And this is the part I will probably wrestle with for a long time:

My own fear of death kept me away from her in some of her final moments.

Not because I didn’t love her enough to be there.

But because I was trying to preserve my own will to survive.

That is a hard truth to say out loud.

My heart wanted to be with her.

But my mind told me that if I watched her die with my own eyes, it would alter something inside me in a way I could not afford.

So instead, I hold tightly to what I did have.

I hold tightly to the memories of her living with me.

Of her loving my children.

Of her finding purpose in being their grandma.

Of the joy she got to experience while she still could.

And I hold onto this too:

In her honor, I will keep choosing life.

I will keep believing.

I will keep healing.

I will keep fighting for the future she still wanted for me.

And in that way, maybe part of her gets to keep living too.

If you are reading this, this is what I want to leave you with:

Do not wait until life becomes fragile to finally see it.

Cherish the ordinary.

Love the people in front of you.

Be grateful for your body while it still carries you.

Find meaning in the smallest things.

Because if death teaches us anything, it is this:

Life was never meant to be sleepwalked through.

Don’t be afraid of death.

Be afraid of dying.