Why Not Me?

It was a quiet evening in September at my house where my parents were visiting from their home two hours away. The shadows were long and the dimming light cast shadows into the living room where my Mom and I sat on a sofa together. We talked about her recent neurology appointment. 

At age 52, my mom was diagnosed with early onset dementia. She had become more forgetful for several years. She took my advice and went to get formal psychological testing and to see a neurologist. 

Mom talked matter of factly about how she was trying to come to terms with the diagnosis. She revealed that she had told most of our extended family and some close friends about the diagnosis. I asked how they all responded.

She replied, “They all appeared shocked because I’m so young. Most people don’t know this can happen to someone my age. The one thing they all ask though is if I ever ask myself –why me?”

“What do you tell them?” I asked.

“I just answer, why not me? We are all God’s children. I’m not any different than anyone else.”

Mom saw the tears welling up in my eyes. She leaned over to touch my arm.

“Rae, I know I won’t suffer. I won’t even know what is happening to me. I just worry about you, my family. I worry about all of you suffering. That bothers me more than anything else. Your suffering is my concern.”

That conversation was one of the last coherent conversations I had with my mother. She lost her memory and eventually lost her ability to speak in the last few years of her life. She passed away at age 60 from early onset dementia with my father at her side.

When I look back on that day, I am sad, but above all, I see courage. I see someone who believed in the reality of suffering and accepted it. I see a young woman faced with a tragic, terminal illness that would completely consume her mind, who looked at her future with the words that many of us need to ask ourselves every day.

Why not me?

We seem to think when we are young that we are immune to tragedy or misfortune. We live in a country where comfort is normality. Around the world, most are not so fortunate. People flock to America because of what we offer, an opportunity for prosperity that most of the world does not know.

In our society we have lost our ability to suffer well. In fact, we view suffering as meaningless and attempt to avoid it at all costs. Rather than seeing the redemptive power of suffering, we see suffering as a mere state to be avoided at all costs.

When faced with misfortune, we typically blame others, the economy, the government, or God. We insist that nothing unfortunate should happen to us.

We rage. We lash out at the world. We become resentful of our lives and those around us.

Social media exacerbates these feelings as we endlessly compare ourselves to those who appear to have better lives than us. We scroll past the highlights of other people’s lives seething with hostility and insecurity. Everyone seems to have a better life than we are living. We leave our screens feeling bitter as we go into the world to interact with reality. Our relationships suffer and our sense of reality is skewed.

How many of us honestly ask, why not me? How many of us worry more about how others are suffering than we worry about ourselves?

Do we live for ourselves seeing our happiness and comfort as the preeminent good in life? Do we reach out to others to ease their suffering? My mother made it clear what matters when faced with death is relationships with others, not our own desires and expectations.

Watching my mother’s decline and death was difficult, but if I learned one thing from the tragedy is that courage exists. Suffering can lead us to a closer union with God and those around us. She taught me to believe that we are all equally human and that resentment or anger is not the ultimate answer to misfortune.

Compassion is the answer. My mother’s compassion and love for her family and God spoke volumes about the woman that she always was until the moment of her death. She was someone who gave to the world and never felt entitled. I can only hope I can live up to her example.

We are all human. We all suffer in some way.

How will you use your suffering? The choice is yours.