My friend Jacob called on Saturday night. It wasn’t nighttime in Manila where he lies in a hospital bed, waiting, wondering how much function will return as his badly broken neck slowly heals.

He is very sad. There have been setbacks: pneumonia, e.coli. He, who has had a proverbial woman in every port, wonders if he will ever have another orgasm. He tells his young girlfriend that she should consider that he (who is 50, like me) will come out of this an old man. He tells his wife not to dare renege, out of some sense of duty, to the divorce they recently agreed upon.

He is walking already, with help. This is good—miraculous, really. Yet he thinks about how he will never play rugby again. How life has handed him more change than he ever expected.

Mom and Dad are here, finally. I haven’t seen them since last Christmas, when we all wondered if we would be together for another, the details of my diagnosis getting worse with each new revelation. Then, days after they got home to Minnesota, Dad’s terrible news about his eyesight. We wondered how much we would have to bear all at once.

Treatment for him: needles in his eyes, doctors working to restore his sight. Treatment for me: needles in my arms, doctors killing just enough of me that the rest could live.

What have I taken from all this? Just tenderness. How easy now to see how dear and impermanent we all are. I look at my friend Sukey’s hands, for instance, with her tiny, exquisitely tapered fingers she adorns with rings, just so, like only she could. I ache knowing that she, with her beautiful hands and her deeply kind heart, and her quick mind that has taught and mentored my beloved boys, she, too, will pass from this world, as we all must. Worlds upon worlds, passing from this one.

I think of my friends Donnis and Peter and how their house burned down in a night—in less than a night. They had a certain kind of life, a certain rhythm to their days, and in a night it was gone, gone. I want to tell them that what is important is that they are still here, that this is the main thing. But I cannot, for I remember once losing a huge bin of photos and how I wept for days.

I have tinnitus, especially in my right ear, ever since chemo. My left upper arm is numb—like with Novocain. My breasts are gone. Plenty of changes to grieve, I guess. But to what end? What can I do but drink in this life? What can any of us do?

I tell my boys, “I love you more than I can say.” I have said this more times that I can say. And after looking my death in her imperturbable face, I want to say this, on my best days, to everyone, to my acquaintance with the backhanded compliments, to the relative who says mean things.

This is a tall order, since even after everything, I still forget that I am enough. I listen to my friend Eliza tonight, speaking with gentle self-deprecation, even in the face of her obvious radiance, and it’s a kind of gift. It reminds me that this is what we do; we think that we are less than miraculous.

Yet, there she is, her brown eyes full of light. And there’s Sukey with her delicate hands, and Jacob in his quieted body with the wandering eyes, my Dad with his fading ones. There is Donnis, sifting through the ashes, searching for memories, perfect in her sorrow.

Let us be, together.