Remembering The Future

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said ,”the most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you can never have”

I first heard this quote a long time ago but recently heard it again. I’ve been tossing it around in my mind ever since. How true a statement it is. 

When I developed a serious and nearly fatal infection following a routine knee operation, my future was forever changed. I remember waking up and feeling grateful to still be alive but I also remember staring at the hospital ceiling that night and realizing that life, as I’d known it and life as I thought I would know it in the future, was irrevocably changed. Little did I know then that far bigger and scarier changes were still to come.



At various points in my 11-year battle with infections in my knee and stump I’ve succumbed to bouts of anger, which is only natural. As my surgeon told me once, he’d be very concerned about me if I didn’t have anger and sadness about what was happening to my life. I couldn’t quite put into words, however, what it was that I was so angry about. I knew I was angry that these things were happening to me and I knew I was angry with God for allowing them to continue to happen. I knew that I was angry that my life had to be put on hold and that I was hours away from my best friend and second family. I have never regretted my decision to amputate my leg but I was angry that it had ever gotten that far and that I'd ever found myself in the position to have to make such a choice. What I didn’t realize I was angry about until just the other night, though, is just what Kierkegaard said. I was angry because the future I thought I would have, the future we all thought I would have, was out of my reach. It was over. I knew I’d get back on my feet [no pun intended] and get back to life eventually but I knew that life was never going to be the same as it had been and that the train of my life had been completely derailed by something so tiny yet so incredibly vicious. Bacteria.



I was remembering where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. When the infections started, I was supposed to be in college. I was supposed to be moving out of the house and creating a life of my own. I was supposed to be having the time of my life and was supposed to be on the same general path as my peers. I was supposed to be graduating college at the age of 22 or 23. I was supposed to land a great job and be fully independent. All of those things and more were supposed to be happening to me but instead I was in and out of the hospital so much I should have been getting frequent stay points.

That is the future that I was supposed to have. That is the future I will never have. Life has changed for me and there is no going back. I will never be the same person I was before this fight for my life began. There is no reset button to push. I have changed. The changes have been mental, emotional and physical.

On September 4^th 2014 the biggest hit came that changed everything. My oldest sister was diagnosed with the most aggressive and 100% fatal form of brain cancer. On November 2^nd 2014, she passed away. My amazing, brilliant, beautiful, loving, quick-witted, funny big sister was taken from us by another monster. My monster is bacteria; hers was cancer.

I remember sitting in the hospital with her that last week before she entered hospice care at home. I’d known from the day she was diagnosed that she was going to die but I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. How could there be life without my oldest sister? How could we, as a family, continue? The sun comes up every morning and every morning it takes a moment for me to remember that my big sister isn’t here and every morning it crushes me. I go about my day doing the things I should be doing and have always done but sometimes I look around me and wonder how this is possible. How is it that life is continuing and how is it that the rest of the world goes about their day? How can there possibly be a future without my sister in it?

We are supposed to watch her receive her PhD and become Dr. Jones. We are supposed to watch her get married. We are supposed to watch her have the children she always wanted. We are supposed to grow old together. That is the future we are supposed to have and the future we can never have.

I remember realizing about a year into this battle that I had matured in many ways far beyond the maturity level of my peers. Getting drunk and living a fairly carefree existence was no longer what my future held. Graduating, landing a great job and becoming fully independent were no longer in my cards. Progressing one step at a time had ended for me and instead I had progressed in a series of gigantic leaps bypassing the typical milestones in the average person’s life experience and I was angry.

It took me a long time to realize, though, that just because life had drastically changed for me it didn’t mean that the bright incredible future my high school history teacher had seen for me wasn’t still there. It wasn’t going to be the same future it had been but a future nonetheless and one I am most grateful for. The reality is that I could have, and more than once should have, died years ago which would have meant no future for me at all. It is a new future with new goals and new passions and new hopes and new dreams. 

I don't know if it's true that everything happens for a reason and that everything happens as it is meant to happen. I do know, however, that my future was meant to change. It was meant to head off in an entirely new direction. I was meant to be derailed in order to make it possible for me to jump onto this new train of life. Do I still think about the future I should have had, the future I know I will never completely have? Yes, and I am certain that there will be times throughout my life when I will think back on that future. I don’t think one can ever forget a serious life changing event that took place in their life nor the drastic ways in which life changed because of it. I think that all becomes just one part of the whole person, the whole life.



Here’s a thought…
What if Kierkegaard was only half right? The most painful state of being is remembering the future, but what if that is a future you were never meant to have in the first place?