it really isn't fair

There's a woman at my company who is vibrant, energetic, kind, strong, well respected, and just found out she's got advanced breast cancer. Advanced advanced... like not good advanced. I wish her the best for a peaceful journey through what must be a terrible ordeal. In the blink of an eye her life changes track from family and career to doctors and drugs.

I struggle with the frustration of knowing that the all powerful and knowing God doesn't really choose who gets to live a long and happy life and who dies before they are 45 and doesn't get to see their kids grow up. It is what it is - but the irrational part of me has petty thoughts, and I will confess the worst of them right here:

There's a second woman at my company who is the tiniest, weakest, little woman I've ever met. There's no way that she tips the scales at any more than 90 pounds; she is so frail that I think a strong gust of wind would send her flying. I see her outside in the morning when I come in, and almost every time I head out to lunch, or to a meeting she's outside huddled next to the building cigarette in hand. She is a chronic, take 6 smoke breaks a day, wake up in the middle of the night to take the edge off smoker. Seeing her outside purposely sucking tar and smoke deep into her body makes me angry.

I don't for a moment wish that these two women could change places, nor do I think that one is more deserving of cancer than the other. It just feels like one woman is playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun and the other woman is laying on the floor wounded from an unloaded gun.

When I was a kid and things didn't seem right and I couldn't express it I would default to "but dad, it isn't fair" and he would always (and I mean always) reply, "nobody said life was fair." You got that right Dad -- not only isn't it fair, sometimes it stinks.

I would be whining about the lack of fairness regardless of the other woman but it is hard to see every day. I just want to shake her... SMOKING BAD LITTLE WOMAN ---BAD!!!!

I know we're supposed to see the light in the situation, my colleague has time with her family, she gets to make peace with her life, we get to acknowledge and show her how wonderful we think she is. We are also reminded to take stock of our own lives and take advantage of every minute... blah blah blah... Forgive me if I take a moment and wallow in the unjustness of it for a day or two.