This is really a tremendous piece of writing. While it's not specifically about leukemia, or marathons, it certainly tackles the topics of adversity and perseverance head on. Probably one of the best, most powerful, most moving things I've read in a long time.
A long time ago you stopped raging at the universe for doing this to your daughter, and years before she was born, you stopped believing in a benevolent god, but right now you would like to hurl some curses at a supremely powerful being, to have the satisfaction of getting an answer back. You would take on Satan and ten men, but no one asks you do to that. No one has ever asked you to do that.One of the earliest working titles for my leukemia work-in-progress was "So Lucky," for a number of different reasons. This essay speaks to many of them.
They asked you to do this instead, this infinitely harder thing. And you think about that study, and you laugh out loud again, and your daughter asks why you are laughing, and you say, "Sometimes, girlfriend, I can't believe how badly people miss the point."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I don't care that I've never seen Paris."
She's accustomed to your moods, so she nods, and she turns on the radio. "It's your favorite song!" she says. "Isn't that lucky?"
And you hug her hard, but she's used to that, too, and she lets you, and even lets you sing along without complaining ("this time only, mom!"), and you are lucky, probably the luckiest woman living, and happier than you have ever been, but not in any way an academic would understand, or even conceive. Your joy is bigger than the universe and contains all the sorrow of a lifetime, and has nothing whatsoever to do with feeling sufficiently rewarded for your work.
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