I used to think “growing up” meant finally having a favorite grocery store, paying $7.99 for the good detergent, and calling your parents to tell them you actually cooked something that didn’t come from a microwave.
I thought it meant becoming more yourself.
Not preparing for the possibility of becoming a memory.
Cancer has a way of taking your life and shaking it like a snow globe—except nothing lands softly. There’s no gentle transition into maturity, no “you’ll figure it out as you go.”
It’s just:
Here.
Handle this.
Handle all of this.
Handle more than any person your age should ever have to.
And you do it.
Not because you’re brave,
but because survival doesn’t care about your comfort.
Growing up fast looks different when you never chose it.
It’s not about independence or confidence or building a future.
It’s about learning to live and grieve at the same time.
It’s signing paperwork you never wanted to know existed.
It’s whispering wishes for after you’re gone when you should still be arguing about vacation plans or what color to paint the kitchen.
It’s sitting in sterile rooms talking about your “prognosis” while your friends talk about baby names and backyard renovations.
It’s this strange, painful double-life:
One part of you still wants to decorate for holidays, plan for next summer, imagine growing old.
And another part of you knows you might not get the chance.
You grieve versions of yourself that never got the chance to grow up.
The 30-year-old you.
The 40-year-old you.
The mom version of you.
The healed version of you.
The one who wasn’t constantly surviving, constantly hurting, constantly negotiating with time.
You watch the world move forward while you try to make peace with a future that’s shrinking.
Death ages you in ways you don’t see in the mirror.
It ages your heart.
Your soul.
Your patience.
Your priorities.
It teaches you how temporary everything is—
how beautiful, how brutal, how unfair, and how incredibly fragile.
And in the middle of all of that heaviness, you grow in softer ways too.
You learn to love harder.
You learn to say it more.
You learn that moments matter more than milestones.
You learn who stays.
Who shows up.
Who sits beside you in the hard parts without needing to fix anything.
You learn gratitude in ways you never knew before—
gratitude for a slow morning, for a meal you can actually taste, for a day where the pain is a 4 instead of an 8, for laughter that feels like a tiny rebellion.
You learn to stop waiting.
Stop holding back.
Stop apologizing for needing help.
Stop pretending you’re invincible.
And maybe that’s the real growing up:
learning what matters,
learning what doesn’t,
and letting love soften the places where fear tries to take root.
Death has a way of making you grow up fast.
But love—
love is the thing that keeps you soft.
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Hi, it’s me, Mojo.
Professional Frenchie. Emotional support loaf. Keeper of secrets. Sniffer of tears.
I’ve been watching my human grow up faster than any human should have to.
And not the normal kind of growing up — not jobs, not bills, not learning that the vacuum isn’t actually a predator (I’m still not convinced).
I mean the heavy kind.
The kind where she’s learning about things people my height shouldn’t even overhear.
Words like “prognosis.”
Phrases like “quality of life.”
Sentences that make the room feel too small and the world feel too big.
And I sit right next to her through all of it — on the couch, on the bed, on the bathroom floor.
Wherever her heart is hurting, that’s where I park my butt.
I wish she didn’t have to grow up like this.
I wish her lessons were things like how to fold laundry or how to say no to people who don’t deserve her energy.
But instead, she’s learning how fragile time is.
How precious moments are.
How love can be soft even when life is not.
And here’s what I’ve learned watching her:
Even when she’s scared… she’s gentle.
Even when she’s hurting… she’s grateful.
Even when life is breaking her open… she still finds room to love.
So if she has to face the kind of growing up that no human should?
Then I’m going to face it with her.
Every doctor appointment.
Every hard night.
Every quiet cry.
Every victory nap afterward.
Because yeah — death has a way of making humans grow up fast.
But I’m here to make sure she never grows alone.
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