Before Tomorrow Comes

A couple of weeks before, while she rested, I picked up her phone. Her notes app was open. Inside, I found a list of goals she had written only three weeks earlier. A list filled with hope, aspiration, and belief.

The title read:

Things I will do when I beat cancer.

Despite everything she had been told, despite the worsening news, her faith remained intact. Somewhere deep within her, she still believed this could one day become nothing more than a distant nightmare. And somehow, somewhere, so did I. Perhaps denial is one of the ways human beings survive the unbearable.

Her goals were written simply:

• Start a YouTube channel about surviving cancer.
• Help women and others going through similar journeys.
• Start a rental dress company.

My heart sank.

Tears fell before I could stop them. The thought that those dreams might never unfold felt unbearable. The thought that she continued to hope for a positive outcome, even in the face of such uncertainty, completely broke me.

Here was someone enduring one of the most brutal illnesses imaginable, yet her aspirations were not centred on herself. She wanted to help others. To be a light. To become a source of hope for people walking the same road she was.

Not many people were able to see Mereana in those final weeks. But I can say, hand on heart, that the person she became during that time was one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever witnessed.

There was a stillness about her. A quiet calm that somehow existed even through pain. A kind of glow, not physical, but something deeper. An aura of compassion, gentleness, and love.

She was grieving her own life. The life she might have had. The life she deserved. The life that was quietly slipping away.

And yet, somehow, she radiated peace.

It felt as though she existed in a delicate space between suffering and acceptance. Between heartbreak and surrender. A human being returned to a raw and vulnerable state, stripped of ego, stripped of pretence, forced into surrender not by choice, but by the undeniable forces of nature.

Unfair. Cruel. Beyond explanation.

And yet, within that surrender, there was extraordinary grace.

Writing this now takes me back to that room. Back to that moment. And it still hurts.

But if there is something I want you, the reader, to take from this, it is this:

Life keeps moving. Time continues forward. And often, the things that consume our minds are far smaller than they appear within them.

If there is something you want to try, pursue, or experience in this life, do it.

Take the risk.
Say the words.
Start the thing you keep postponing.

If not for yourself, then in honour of Mereana. In honour of all the people whose lives were cut short before they had the chance to fully live theirs.

Tomorrow is never guaranteed.

Just as her dreams may never have been realised, neither will ours if we continue waiting forever for the “right” moment.

One day, every one of us will leave this world. And when we do, life will continue turning exactly as it always has. Conversations will continue. Cafés will fill. People will worry about their bills, their jobs, and their daily routines.

The world will keep going.

Death, in that sense, is life’s great equaliser. One of humanity’s deepest mysteries. And perhaps also a quiet reminder that while we are here, however briefly, we should truly live.