Life, death, and taxes — Vieje Piauwasdy

One of the smartest people I’ve known and someone I consider a mentor once said, "There’s 3 truths in life: Life, Death, and Taxes”. RIP Bill, we miss you.

Over the last few days, I’ve been dealing and coming to terms with my cat’s inevitable death. I mentioned that I took Toro to the vet last week and it appeared that he was turning a corner over the weekend. Sophia and I came home on Monday to see a constipated and really weak Toro. We took him to the ER and had him hospitalized over night to get tests done.

The doctor isn’t 100% sure, but the diagnosis appears to be lymphoma or a form of cancer. If true, the absolute best case is Toro lives for another few months to a year and at worst, we’re going to have to put him down soon.

I had never really thought too hard about Toro dying. I have had him for the majority of my adulthood since I was 22 and he is an older cat at around age 12. He’s been such a big part of my life and I had thought that he would live to meet my first born child or at least that was the goal.

Unfortunately life likes to bite you in the ass sometimes. Life is full of amazing highs and some miserably painful lows and I feel like one of the lows will be coming shortly. I suppose that is the beauty of it all. Life without death is life without happiness. We can’t feel highs without feeling pain at times.

It’s been a weird week between Kobe Bryant’s death and Toro being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Writing about death may go down in history as one of the weirdest blog posts I ever write, but this is perhaps my way of coping and dealing with death.

If you’r reading this, you’re experiencing life right now. You’ve also likely experienced taxes and will continue to experience taxes for the rest of your life. The one unknown is death and if there’s one thing for certain is that we will all experience it at some point.

Now comes the happy part. We’re all going to die anyways so might as well love one another, make an impact in someone’s life, and have a lot of fun while we’re here.