She left work months ago to rest after a return of her breast cancer.  She went to Singapore to spend time with family and friends and she prayed and prayed to the Buddha.  “If I still have value here, please let me stay.  If I am just a waste of resources, then I will go.  But if I still have good to do, please let me stay.”

And one week ago, 2 different doctors, both with dismal statistics a few months ago, confirmed that the cancer is gone.  And today, I sat with her, so grateful that she still has good to do.  “If I was just a number,” she said, “I wouldn’t be here.  The numbers say I should be gone.  But I am not just a number.  None of us is a number.”

Her grandfather told her years ago that with all of the uncountable lives we’ve lived, every person we meet in this life has been or will be either our child or our parent in some other life.  That person you hate, that person who wronged you, that person you can’t forgive – you have loved them immeasurably at some time.  We are all each other’s parents and children, renting these bodies, all connected by an unending thread.  We are not just numbers.