The Choice

“I thought it would be so dark in here,” she said. “But there’s so
much light.”
A few months later she called with devastating news: Her breast
cancer was no longer in remission. It had returned and was spreading
rapidly. She said, “I don’t know how long I have.” She told me she
planned to do the inside-out exercise every day so that she could
empty herself of the inevitable anger and fear she felt, and ĕll herself
back up with love and light. She said that, paradoxically, the more
honest she was with her family about her more negative feelings, the
more grateful she became. She told her husband how resentful she
had been that his career had taken priority. Telling him openly made it
easy to see that holding on to the resentment served nobody, and she
found she could see more vividly all the ways he had supported her
throughout their marriage. She found she could forgive him. With her
teenage son, she didn’t mask her fears about death, she didn’t give
him the reassurances that le no room for doubt. She talked openly
about her uncertainties. She told him that sometimes we just don’t
know. To her daughter, who was younger, in middle school, she
expressed how angry she was about the moments she would miss—
hearing about her ĕrst dates, seeing her open her college acceptance
letters, helping her put on her wedding dress. She didn’t repress her
rage as an unacceptable emotion. She found her way to what was
beneath it—the depth and urgency of her love.
When her husband called to tell me Agnes had died, he said he
would never get over the grief, but that her passing was peaceful. e
quality of love in their family relationships had deepened in her last
months of life. She had taught them a truer way of relating to one
another. Aer I hung up the phone, I wept. rough no one’s fault, a
beautiful person was gone too soon. It was unfair. It was cruel. And it
made me wonder about my own mortality. If I died tomorrow, would
I die at peace? Had I really learned for myself what Agnes had