It truly does make you more aware of your days.

My brother was a year and a half older than me. His life was going along nicely. He spent a normal day on an out of town weekend with his wife. They went to bed on Sunday night and a few hours later he woke up with very bad pain.

It never stopped from there.

Of course there were the normal tests and then scans and as someone said previously, the wait.... wait..... wait between every little next thing that seemed amazingly long. When it was finally, firmly diagnosed as the dreaded C.... it turned out to be an extremely rare kind that had no known successful treatment. It was stage 4 when it showed up, but he didin't tell us that one little part. Nine months later he was gone.

He loved life and lived it well. We were very close and that is what I took away from it, that instead of letting it drag me down, as much as the grief seemed unbearable at times, that I should make sure I enjoyed every day all the more, to get out of it all that I could for whatever days I am given. We should never take a single day for granted.