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It can't be stopped

I just finished a rewatch of Little Women (2019) and I spent much of the film crying. I forgot how integral Beth’s illness and death is to the plot, and watching it reminded me so much of the desire to keep someone alive despite the impossibility.

At one point, Jo March is sitting on the beach with her sick sister Beth. Beth had scarlet fever and survived it, but it affected her heart. Beth turns to Jo and says “I’ve had a very long time to think about this, and I’m not afraid. It’s like the tide going out. It’s goes out slowly, but it can’t be stopped.” Jo replies, “I’ll stop it. I’ve stopped it before.”

When my dad first got sick with brain cancer aka glioblastoma (GBM), my main goal was for him to get better from brain surgery since he had weakness on the right side of his body, to the point that he could not walk, and had severe aphasia, so he could not communicate to us always.

But as time went on, and he got better even if he never could fully walk and talk the same way again, my goal simply became to keep him alive as long as possible. I knew his diagnosis was terminal, and so did everyone else, but I wanted him to live anyway.

He wanted to be alive for my younger sister’s wedding in late June. He wanted to be alive for the birth of his next grandchild in late September. He wanted to be alive for Christmas. He made it to June 21, 2023. He only lived for 5 months from diagnosis to death.

You can’t stop the tide. It is an endless push and pull that will swallow us all.

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