It isn’t easy to cope with death.
Whether it is your own mortality or the death of someone you are close to, it is something that takes time and is something we all have to deal with. Coming to term with death is something we tend to not consider until we either lose someone or until we get older.
Unfortunately, for some, death comes at a much younger age.
This was the case of Holly Butcher, who recently passed away from cancer. When she was 26 years old, she was diagnosed with cancer, and after that, she knew that she didn’t have much time to come to terms with her own death. Therefore, she decided to write a note before she died, which she posted to Facebook on Jan. 3. She passed away the next day.
In her “Note before I die,” Holly talked about some valuable lessons that she had learned from life.
She started off her note with:
“It’s a strange thing to realize and accept your mortality at 26 years young. It’s just one of those things you ignore. The days tick by and you just expect they will keep on coming; until the unexpected happens. I always imagined myself growing old, wrinkled and grey- most likely caused by the beautiful family (lots of kiddies) I planned on building with the love of my life. I want that so bad it hurts.”
Holly did not want others to fear death and wanted her readers to reflect on the things that matter in life.
“I haven’t started this ‘note before I die’ so that death is feared – I like the fact that we are mostly ignorant to its inevitability. Except when I want to talk about it and it is treated like a ‘taboo’ topic that will never happen to any of us. That’s been a bit tough. I just want people to stop worrying so much about the small, meaningless stresses in life and try to remember that we all have the same fate after it all so do what you can to make your time feel worthy and great, minus the bullsh*t.”
She spent quite some time reflecting on her life the months before her death.
She wondered why humans spent endless amounts of time worrying about tiny issues that are, in the larger scale of things, completely unimportant.
“Be grateful for your minor issue and get over it. It’s okay to acknowledge that something is annoying but try not to carry on about it and negatively affect other people’s days… You might have got caught in bad traffic today, or had a bad sleep because your beautiful babies kept you awake, or your hairdresser cut your hair too short… Let all that sh*t go. I swear you will not be thinking of those things when it is your turn to go. It is all SO insignificant when you look at life as a whole. I’m watching my body waste away right before my eyes with nothing I can do about it and all I wish for now is that I could have just one more Birthday or Christmas with my family, or just one more day with my partner and dog. Just one more.”
Holly continued by talking about her passion for exercise, and she asked for people to appreciate their healthy and functioning body, regardless of its size.
She emphasized the importance of mental and spiritual health, as well, and asked for people to not let the perfect social media body consume their lives. According to her, it’s important to constantly work on your own wellbeing, even if that involves cutting out people from your life.
She concluded her note with the following points:
“Travel if it’s your desire, don’t if it’s not. Work to live, don’t live to work. Seriously, do what makes your heart feel happy. Eat the cake. Zero guilt. Say no to things you really don’t want to do. Don’t feel pressured to do what other people might think is a fulfilling life. You might want a mediocre life and that is so okay.”
She ended her note with a plea for more people to donate blood, saying:
“Blood donation (more bags than I could keep up with counting) helped keep me alive for an extra year – a year I will be forever grateful that I got to spend it here on Earth with my family, friends and dog. A year I had some of the greatest times of my life.”
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https://www.facebook.com/hollybutcher90/posts/10213711745460694
