Written by the Stars

Last night we were watching an episode of ‘New Amsterdam’ on Netflix, and in this show the Medical Director of a large New York hospital has been diagnosed with throat cancer and his treatment isn’t working. The news tipped him over the edge and he ranted and raged about how he didn’t want to die and didn’t understand why his impending death was so arbitrary. He believed that everything had to happen for a reason. Jump to this morning and someone bought a copy of Evie’s book ‘Written by the Stars’ where she writes so eloquently about two young girls that, together, overturn centuries of a patriarchal society allowing women to decide their own futures. Their destinies are no longer written before they are born or play out to a pre-determined course of events.

My small brain, promptly linked the two and I began to think once again, as I have done so many times, why Evie was predetermined to die. Why out of the 7 billion people on this earth did she have that one cell sat on her hippocampus that went rogue and killed her? How could she be so happy and healthy one moment and 13 weeks later be dead? Was her disease arbitrary? Why? Over the last 3 years I have spent vast amounts of time trying to figure that out.

We naturally look for explanations and even someone to ‘blame’. We have to put a label on it so that we can understand and categorize the event. Everyone tells you the same thing - don’t try looking for an explanation because you almost certainly won’t find one. You end up going round in circles over and over again.

So if we can’t find an acceptable explanation then what? What is it about? If there is no-one to blame what do we do? Even if there is someone to blame, in real terms what will it change? Nothing I guess. So if I come to the conclusion that Evie’s illness was some random act then what does that mean for me? Quite simply if there is no reason for it, I can’t unpick it. I can’t make it better. It isn’t about acceptance or moving on, to me it is more about understanding why I feel like this, and how that feeling is impacting on me and those around me.

Evie’s cancer was ‘unpredictable’ by which I mean that when she was conceived, there was no way that we could have foreseen what was coming. It wasn’t exactly arbitrary, but there was nothing that we could have done differently to reach a different outcome. Who is to say that if a different egg had been fertilized that day that the same result wouldn’t have happened? The frustration isn’t with the randomness of her death, but with our inability to fix it, to bring her back or to prevent it from happening in the first place.

To some degree, Evie’s future and her cancer were truly ‘Written by the Stars’ and in her case, no amount of determination or belief could have changed it. Ironic when you consider the story that she wrote so beautifully. No matter how hard I try, I can’t change her, or my destiny. But ….. I can love her in a way that no-one else can.