Still fuming? Life is too short

Vernell Howell, my neighbour, got some good news not long ago. She had beaten a rare and deadly cancer. At 77, the retired public school teacher had a new lease on life. And she was making the most of it.

She'd written a short book about her bout with the disease. She showed me a copy,

called My Miraculous Journey: From Intensive Care to Intensive Living. I assumed it was meant for sick people, something uplifting to read.

Turns out, having a neardeath experience had reminded her of some lessons easily forgotten by the healthy.

“Time is not promised and waits for no one,” Howell writes.

She'd taken that lesson to heart, stopped talking about writing a book, wrote it and made a website.

That resonated with me. Another year has passed — much of it spent procrastinating. And fuming — about what I can't change while not changing what I can, looking for others to fume with, losing sight of important things in a fog of fumes.

But in her book, Howell emphasises the things we should focus on.

“Build closer and loving relationships with family and friends,” she writes. “If relationships are broken, restore them. Never let circumstances or people change, postpone, or cancel family plans.”

That's hard for some. Our work is too important, we say. Taking that extra shift means more money for the family, we argue. But the truth is that many of us will go to our graves knowing we disappointed our families for all the wrong reasons.

“I regret not going to see my parents as often as I could have because of things that

Time is not promised and waits for no one. Vernell Howell

were, in retrospect, not as important as I made them out to be,” Howell told me.

My dad is 94. I know he'd like me to visit more often. Howell says: Do it before it's too late.

Be grateful, not regretful. Life taught Howell how to focus on the former to avoid the latter.

In 2008, her beautician noticed small bumps on her scalp. The condition was eventually diagnosed as cancer. But it would take another year for doctors to pinpoint the source: T-cell lymphoma, which affects blood cells in the bone marrow.

“Discovering I had cancer was overwhelming. Really devastating. I just couldn't respond to anything, which felt so odd because I hadn't experienced any symptoms previously.”

She describes how her husband would sit with her at the hospital, read Bible scripture to her, pray with her and cheer her.

She spent years undergoing cancer treatments. Twice she was put on life support. In 2015, her younger brother became the donor for a bone-marrow transplant. It worked. Her oncologists at Johns Hopkins received international acclaim for the breakthrough treatment.

For Howell, it was, as the book title says, a “miraculous journey”.

She puts faithfulness at the top of her life-lessons list.

“Love the Lord God at all times,” she writes. Also: “Keep your body in good health and physical condition”, “Meet new friends. Encourage and inspire others”, and “Keep a positive mind-set, especially during tough times.”

All worth doing. Now. Even if there won't be much time left for fuming.