The day before I left for college, I was handed a packet.
I was in the middle of packing my car, still needed to buy shower sandals, imagining who I was going to become. The front page read — in Times New Roman, which is somehow the detail that stuck — Living with a Life Threatening Disease. I didn't have the capacity to process it. Not that day. I took the packet, walked out of the doctor's office, and went home to finish packing.
I barely remember the conversation with my family afterward. I didn't tell any friends. The next morning, I got in my car and drove up I-95 to Connecticut.
College was a great escape. For weeks, I sank into classes, made new friends, had a blast. Then I went home for Thanksgiving. I saw my dad, who had the same disease as me. I'd found out about mine because I'd been going through the medical screening to be an organ donor for him. He was thinner. He looked weak. His appetite was gone. Some of the sparkle in his eye was gone. But he was hopeful his name would get called for a donor organ.
Christmas came. He was even thinner. When I hugged him, I could feel his bones.
Then on New Year's Eve, he collapsed.
We rushed him to the ER where he went straight into emergency brain surgery. He'd suffered a ruptured aneurysm. The high blood pressure from his kidney disease had caused a stroke. That night, reality hit me in a way it hadn't before. This disease we shared was killing my dad. And one day it would kill me.
For the next few years, I watched him deteriorate. And every time I saw him, I saw myself. That's a selfish way to think about it, but it was my reality. The stroke had caused severe brain damage and my dad was never the same. His mental capacity was like that of a six-year-old most of the time. He'd broken his hip while in the ICU due to negligent nurses, and spent most of the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
I won't go through all of it. But what lives with me — what haunts me — were the three or four times over those years when my dad had moments of absolute clarity. His brain would just light up and he'd be completely himself for a few minutes.
One of those moments was at the mall. I used to take him to get a strawberry milkshake and wheel him around. It had become one of his favorite things. We were sitting in the food court when it happened... he was suddenly, fully there. I could see it in his eyes. But immediately, I saw tears. He looked at me and understood his situation. The full-time care. No longer mobile. Multiple conditions stacking up. His eyes locked on me and with such conviction and clarity he said, "I'm so sorry. I don't want to be a burden on you and the family." Then he looked away and quietly told me he wished he was dead.
It was those moments that shaped everything for me. Seeing my dad's pain when he understood his own reality.
Either you're living intentionally, or you're just alive.
In those rare moments, he had realized he was barely living. And it was killing him to feel that way.
I faced my own reality. While a lot of people around me talk about living forever, I just want to live completely. I don't think about it in years. I think about it in minutes. Minutes I lived fully versus minutes I was just going through the motions. I want the majority of mine filled with the former. Time that's fulfilling, meaningful, and spent with people I love.
I've accepted that my timeline is likely shorter than most, and I'm genuinely OK with that. I'll take care of my health and fight my genetics, but I don't have a burning need to capture more time. It's about impact, not duration. And when the day comes where I can't live intentionally, where I'm just holding on, I hope I can pass quickly and find peace.
To those who don't have to carry something like this: I'm glad for you. My only advice is simple.
Live intentionally.