It Is What It Is

Those were the heart wrenching last words a friend dying of brain cancer said to me.

It wasn’t our whole conversation, but those words — words of complete abandonment, acceptance, resignation — are the ones that stuck with me.

He was a young man, a son, a brother, a friend…a bartender. On his last days, I found myself laughing in his mom’s kitchen as he showed me his mixology techniques. “Come with me,” he said. “Let me make you a drink.” And so I followed him to the kitchen. His movements slow; his words a slur, after a stroke paralyzed a side of his body. Still, he insisted in fixing me a drink.  I wish I could remember what was in it — it might’ve been rum and a sweet mixer. Why don’t I remember? Because I was too focused on fighting back tears.

The thing is I honestly didn’t know how to go about socializing with a dying person; how to comfort a person who was literally due to pass away within the next few days. So, I tried my hardest to match his remarkably great spirit and just go with the flow. I listened to anything he said as carefully as possible. We chatted about the bar where he used to work, the times we’d crossed paths. His mom was friends with mine, so they came to visit sometimes and I always missed them. We had a good chat.

Inevitably, the subject (his illness) came up. All I remember is how deeply he cared about his mother, about how she was dealing with and felt about his condition. She was his main concern — not the fact that he was dying. He really didn’t want her to suffer once he was gone. That literally killed me inside.

“I try to tell her,” he said. “It is what it is.”

It gave me chills.

He had to accept at such young age (mid-twenties) the fact that he couldn’t change his circumstances. Death was essentially waiting for him across the room and he wasn’t at all terrified. Or at least he put on a hell of a brave face for his mother’s sake and didn’t show it. I was in awe.

He left this world a few weeks after that conversation we had in his mom’s kitchen — the day that I and several other people went to their house to basically say our goodbyes while he was still alive.

All my life, I’ve avoided going to wakes and funerals. I’m not a cold person at all, just weak when it comes to such delicate life experiences. But, to his last goodbye…I had to go, I wanted to go to.

I was so touched by his words, by his courage — and still am to this date. He didn’t fight the fact that some things we really cannot change. He was another example of life being too, too short and that we must truly live it our way while we can.

Every time I see or hear “it is what it is,” I think of him. And it reminds me that, when all else fails, when all is said and done, looking at the positives things we’ve had in life, can help us cope or overcome the toughest of all challenges: accepting death. Acceptance may not be easy, but it’s necessary.

Thank you and rest in Peace, my friend.