Worst Thing

Today, while watching The View… oh, I mean the fourth hour of the NBC Today Show… honest mistake… Hoda Kotb mentioned something which made me think. While they were theorizing over the recent photos showing Elizabeth Edwards not wearing her wedding ring, Hoda began a brain dump over Elizabeth’s issues. She ranged from mentioning her battle with cancer to her personal life issues and her cheating husband, former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards. What made me think has nothing to do with her wedding ring. We all know they have their problems as their issues have been made public for some time now. What she did say was that her battle with cancer is the worst thing that could happen to someone.

Personal illness in the form of cancer not only carries life threatening absoluteness with it, but it also teeters on the edge of destroying your emotional being and tests your spiritual being to the very end. Yes, it is “one” of the worst things that can happen to a person, but is it the absolute worst thing that can happen? Elizabeth is a proud mother of four. Anyone who is a parent or primary caregiver for children knows the worst thing is not personal trauma or tragedy. The absolute worst thing that can happen to someone in my opinion is for someone you love to experience personal trauma or tragedy.

Be it a child, a spouse, a brother, a sister… when they experience pain and are afflicted with disease or other life threatening event, our hearts break. Our personal will is tested because we cannot cure the issue. As humans, we feel like we must fix things. Sometimes, things cannot be fixed. What Elizabeth is facing is one of the worst things imaginable because she has been forced to deal with mortality on a personal physical, emotional, and spiritual level. But, she is in control. She can control her reactions to the situation while not being in physical control of the spreading cancer.

Ask anyone who truly cares for another person if they would switch places with their loved one to take away the pain and they will answer yes. The worst thing that can happen in our lives is to be reduced to simple bystanders as someone we love faces their mortality. Children passing away before their parents and spouses, parents, brothers and sisters, or loved ones passing are the worst things that we can experience.

Everyone has their worst nightmare, but the absolute nature of death creates a sense of finality even the non-spiritual fear. Knowing the overwhelming internal strife facing death brings the worst thing a loved one can experience is the suffering of a loved one and not being able to “help.”

Hoda didn’t say anything wrong, she was thinking out loud and from an outsider’s perspective, we tend to forget the relationships with loved ones and focus on the individual and their self needs. From that perspective, it is the worst thing that could happen because we are thinking about the individual and not the relationships. Ask Elizabeth and I’m sure she will concur that she would much rather be in this situation than have one of her children face this or even her husband. Love cannot be measured when it’s true.

What do you think? Do you have a relationship in your life that you would sacrifice your own for and assure the well being of another? I hope that you do, I know I have several.