"Don’t take the small stuff so seriously and live a little.” she wrote. This young woman's last words are an ode to life!
"Every man dies. Not every man really lives." (William Wallace) says in a famous line from the film "Braveheart".
Nobody knows how much time is granted to them in life and too often time is not fully exploited, or time is wasted on trivial matters.
In fact, this is the meaning of the words written by Bailey Jean Matheson, a 35-year-old young woman from Canada who died on 5 April 2019 from cancer but not before having written her own personal and touching obituary that is an ode to life.
via People
Aware of her impending fate, Bailey had written, when the illness had not yet completely compromised her health, a final obituary message in her own hand, entrusting it to the obituary pages of the Chronicle Herald. Here are some excerpts from her stupendous letter:
"35 years may not seem long, but damn it was good!"
To her parents Bailey wrote:
"Thank you for supporting me and my decisions throughout my life. I always remember my mom saying losing a child would be the hardest loss a parent could go through. My parents gave me the greatest gift of supporting my decisions with not going through chemo and just letting me live the rest of my life the way I believed it should be."
Bailey had also found a companion, shortly before she had been diagnosed and it was to him that she wrote the following message:
"Brent, you came into my life just three months before my diagnosis. You had no idea what you were getting yourself into when you swiped right that day. I couldn't have asked for a better man to be by my side for all the adventures, appointments, laughs, cries, and breakdowns."
For her beloved parents, she also had more words of heartfelt appreciation and deep love:
"I know how hard that must have been watching me stop treatment and letting nature take its course. I love you both even more for this."
Her personalized obituary message ends with a sincere appeal to all those who unlike her, still have some time left here on this earth, advising them to start to use it better:
"Don't take the small stuff so seriously and live a little."
Every existence has a meaning, no matter how brief it may be, what counts is the intensity with which one has loved, gratitude for what one has shared, and the beauty left as a trace of one's own passage.
This is a moving story that the world has already recognized as an extraordinary eulogy to the moments that form our precious life.
