Women diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer have a 33 percent chance of surviving five years. My sister-in-law, Anna, was diagnosed a year ago. She has three young children—the youngest are three-year-old twins. When I first heard, I wanted her to fight. I mean really fight. The aggressive chemo, the clinical trials, the treatments that would make her sick for weeks. Do it now, suffer now, so she could have more time later.
I’m a hospice nurse. I know what’s at stake. I know how precious time becomes. I know what those statistics mean. But here’s the thing I don’t say out loud: In my hospice work, I help people do the exact opposite. I help them know when to stop fighting. When to choose presence over protocol. When to be home in their bodies, with the people they love, even if it means less time… because it’s more present, more cherished time. I know this wisdom. I teach this wisdom. But when it’s Anna? I can’t practice it.
“If you only had five years left, would you live any differently than you’re living now?”
My brother-in-law texted my husband last week. All is good. The twins are potty trained. Jonathan (their oldest) gets up on his own for school now. Anna is still here. I have everything I could ever want. I sat with that text for a long time.
Anna chose not to do aggressive treatment. She’s fighting, yes—but not at the cost of being present with her children right now. Not at the cost of spending whatever time she has feeling sick, exhausted, stolen from the day-to-day moments she values most. She made the choice I help my hospice patients make. And I’ve been struggling with it for a year.
Every few years, I ask myself this question: If you only had five years left, would you live any differently than you’re living now? I thought it was a clarifying question. A way to make sure I’m living with intention, not wasting time, not sleepwalking through my life. The answer always comes back the same: I would travel. I would see the world with my family. I would make sure we were together. This very question, coupled with my twins starting middle school next year, prompted our two-month getaway last fall. I needed us to be together. Work and school and activities have a tendency to create division. Being together in new places, becoming beginners again—this has always helped bridge the gap. I thought the question was helping me live with urgency and purpose.
But I’m learning something different now. Most people don’t know this, but Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—weren’t meant for the people left behind. They were intended for the person who is dying. We’ve turned those stages into a roadmap for survivors, a checklist we think everyone should follow after loss. But that’s not what they were for. They were for the person whose entire understanding of reality just shifted—from “I’ll live forever” to “I have limited time.”
Everything we do is built on the assumption of forever. We save for retirement. We plan for our kids’ graduations. We prepare, prepare, prepare for a future we believe is guaranteed. Then a diagnosis interrupts that belief. Anna gets to move through those stages—if she moves through them at all—on her timeline. Not mine. Not the 33 percent statistic’s timeline. Hers. And I have to let go of trying to control what that looks like.
Here’s what I’m realizing: When faced with death, we’re given a new layer of understanding that, no matter how hard we try, can’t be faked. We can’t pretend we only have five years left when we could have 50.
I recently finished “The Measure”—a book where everyone receives a string that shows the length of their life. Short stringers know their time is limited. Long stringers know they have decades. I became obsessed with asking everyone if they would want to know their string length. Everyone I asked said no. I’m the only one who said yes—as if knowing could somehow put me at ease, give me control, help me plan, stop the worrying.
Maybe it’s because I’m just a few years away from the age my mom died, also from cancer. She was 49. She chose to be sedated at the end, to stop suffering when she knew death was imminent. That was incredibly hard to witness. But it was her choice about her death, her timeline, her control over what little she could control.
Anna knows her string is likely short. And she’s choosing how to spend it—not in treatment rooms, but in her kitchen. At the breakfast table. Potty training twins. Watching her oldest become more independent. The choice I help my hospice patients make. The choice I can’t seem to accept when it’s her.
The quest to make sure I’m living life fully, spending my time doing what I’m meant to do—I think it’s really a failed attempt at control. I thought being present required asking myself: Am I here now? Is this good? Is this what it’s supposed to be? But those questions are the opposite of presence. Once I ask them, I’m taken out of the moment—analyzing, judging, measuring whether I’m doing it right. Unable to see what’s actually in front of me, unable to make the next right choice.
Jimmy, my brother-in-law, isn’t asking those questions. He’s just… here. The twins are potty trained. Jonathan gets up on his own. Anna is still here. I have everything I could ever want. That’s not denial. That’s not giving up. That’s radical acceptance. That’s letting go of control. That’s presence. He’s not trying to control how much time they have left. He’s celebrating the time they have right now. Today. This morning. One moment. One choice. One breath at a time.
As a hospice nurse, I know this is the only way our human brains can handle the weight of mortality. We can’t hold “five years” or “33 percent survival rate” in our minds and still function. But we can see what’s right in front of us and make the next right choice. I know this professionally. I’m learning it personally.
I am pulled to the last words of Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson, who died at age 49: “I so f@$king loved every minute of my life.” What will be my last words? Will I have loved every minute of it? And then I catch myself in the question—the same quest for control, for getting it right, for living with enough intention and urgency.
What if I worried less about my last words? What if I stopped trying to control the outcome, the timeline, the way Anna fights, the way I live? What if I just remembered: Anna is still here. Tara is still here. Right here. Writing. Wondering. Learning from Jimmy what I thought I already knew—that control is an illusion, and presence is the only practice that matters.
You, my friend, are still here—reading this, maybe pondering your own mortality, maybe wrestling with your own need for control, but here nonetheless. What more could we ever hope for?
