It was yet another coffee evening, mellow, comfortable and laced with gossip. Suddenly, Shehla looked grey as she looked up from her coffee, enough for me to stop mid-sentence.
“I have cancer and I don’t know what to do”, she said.
It took me more than a split second to recover. She continued, “Oh, I am alright, don’t worry about me. I just don’t know how to tell the kids their mom has cancer. It will destroy their lives.” She was close to tears now.
“Take a deep breath,” I told my best friend. “Let’s finish coffee before we deal with something as monumental as the big C. And let’s order some cake as well.”
She grinned. Turns out that’s the best thing I could have done at that moment. Later, we discussed what it is that we could do, to prepare the kids handle my best friend’s tryst with her own destiny.