Gray Hair and Graves

I think my little brother's girlfriend is dying.

Actually, even though it's hard to say it about someone that young, my little brother's girlfriend is dying. She has Hodgkin's lymphoma--I'm not positive, but it sounds like stage III-IV--and her prognosis is not good. The other night, she came down with an infection, and if her mother (with whom she had to move back in) hadn't unexpectedly checked on her, the doctors said she probably wouldn't have made it through the night. She's been in the hospital more than out lately. She's twenty-one years old, with luminous brown eyes and a soft southern accent. She never got to go to college, because she's been sick so long. She's twenty-one years old, and she likely won't see twenty-two.

My brother has been spending more time in the hospital than any twenty-six-year-old ever should, waiting. I can only begin to imagine what he thinks as he waits, and just trying to get my head around it absolutely breaks my heart. Inevitably, he'll finally hear the words he's been dreading. He'll have to go home, drive home in his car like he did the day before when he knew he had at least one more day to talk to her, except it won't be the same at all. Then the next day he'll have to get up and figure out how he's going to make it to twenty-seven.

Not too long ago I was putting my hair in a ponytail and gasped as I revealed two bright silver hairs beneath the top layer of dark hair. I felt like it was the end of the world, like my youth was gone, like I may as well hang it up now and figure out how to be happy with my lot, now that I no longer had my pretty face and any time to waste. Right now I realize how absolutely ridiculous and melodramatic I was being. In fact, I'm lucky I get to live long enough to grow gray hair. I will most likely get to turn twenty-eight next month.

Eventually, each one of us will end up in a grave of one kind or another. Not all of us, though, will get the chance to find our gray hairs, to watch them slowly gain more ground on our scalps. We don't all get to accumulate the stories, the laughter and heartbreak, the knowledge and experience that adds up to wisdom, that accompanies those gray hairs. Sometimes it's hard to understand that you're fortunate until you take a moment to put things in perspective.