Perspective

She bounded into my room, arms weighed down with bags of gifts for her friends. Bruises covered her arms from a recent hospital visit. Her face was still puffy from chemo. Cassie had been pronounced cancer free, and she was excited to come back to school. The gifts were for friends with whom she longed to graduate. Her gift to me was the promise that she would be in my class within a month. We were both so excited that Cassie was going to live her dream of promoting with her class.

The week before she was to return to school, however, doctors made a grim discovery. Leukemia had returned, and Cassie needed to be hospitalized. She put up a hard fight. Cassie was brave, but she became very weak. On the evening of the school promotion, our Principal, Mr. Norman had a student stand on the stage holding Cassie’s picture. “She would give anything to walk across this stage with her friends,” he explained. Before the week was out, Cassie was gone.

Chronic pain is debilitating. It is constantly present, bringing a dark cloud over everything we think and do. It can cause us to shut down, and withdraw from normal activities. Sometimes it feels like we cannot see beyond the pain we are living at this moment. But no matter how bad we may feel, we must find a way to keep our life and disability in perspective.

To say that there are always people who are worse off than I am, doesn’t bring much comfort when you hurt. What drives me is that people like Cassie wanted to experience the life of a middle school student, attend classes, learn, do homework, and promote. Yet there were students in school who could do all of those things but didn’t bother.

Sure, I have pain. Yes, I struggle. But I still can do things if I keep life in perspective. It may hurt, but I must do what I can, because I still can. I may not do it as well as I used too, or as fast as I want, but the fact is there are still things I can do. Cassie would have given anything to experience the “today” that I am allowing to pass me by. People like Cassie drive me to keep life in perspective. The tunnel vision that pain can bring is fixed on those who would give anything to feel even as good as we feel, because even with that amount of energy Cassie would have promoted from Middle School.

When farmers plow a field, they find a point at the far end, somewhere off in the distance, and drive straight for it. They don’t look backward to see if the furrow is straight. They look at the point and a straight line is the natural result. Do you have a point on your horizon? Is there a Cassie in your life? Keep your focus there. The lines behind you will be straight and you will be amazed at the yield those lines produce.

Thank you Cassie for being a shining star, and thank you Emily for reminding us. May our memory of our friend never fade.