We have a family relative that was diagnosed with breast cancer over nine years ago. At the time; she was told by doctors that she will not last six months but her desire to live and raise her young children was way stronger than cancer cells.

She went through all available treatments to lengthen her stay with her kids and she had undergone different surgeries, sacrificing many things for the greater cause that kept haunting her ideas; all she thought about was her youngest daughter that was less than one year old.

She kept fighting and struggling, but the cancer cells kept coming back in different forms and hitting new organs of her fragile body; yet she never lost hope, faith or determination to keep on living.

She was told that her cancer cells were one of the worst kinds out there and they will keep coming back. Her trips back and forth to the hospital have become so common to her and her kids who accompanied her and made sure they understood every word told to them by doctors; they wanted to be there for their mother as she is struggling to be there for them.

In the midst of all this turmoil, she loses her husband and she is left alone to struggle through life and sickness. The responsibility of kids’ welfare has doubled overnight and she is now terrified to die because then her kids would have no one in this world and she just could not let that happen.

She kept her brave fight and overcame cancer at one point only to be beaten by it at another; it won’t leave her alone and it kept coming back in different forms till it took over and there was no more energy to fight it or overcome it.

Nine years after the first diagnosis; she was finally sent home to spend her last days with her kids. She can no longer move or take care of herself; her legs are already dead, her arms are following and she cannot swallow. Her daughters move her and change her position in bed; they clean and apply medication on her burned skin and the only thing they hear coming from her mouth are her prayers to Allah to take her to him.

Tonight; I saw her daughter and she was in tears telling us how she and her brothers and sisters are watching their mother die every day. She faints for several hours and comes back thinking that she just blinked and they no longer can give her medication because she is unable to swallow and doctors tell her that food goes to the cancer cells and does not benefit her in any way.

The reason I am posting about this is to ask you to pray for her and ask Allah to bless her with his mercy and forgiveness. May Allah have mercy on all of us; it is true that you don’t know the value of health until you have lost it.  

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Last week was awful; it was filled with disappointments and shocks from people I really thought highly of. It was a slow miserable week and it seemed that it was not going to ever end and I thought to myself: it will be over sooner or later so keep up girl!

I did not imagine that there could be something worse than last week, but this week is proving me wrong so far; maybe this whole month sucks or maybe my stars are just messed up and turning my days into a living hell.

Anyway; I think that one of the worst things that can ever happen to you is when someone you trust breaks a promise he made to you. As we get to know new people in our life, we grow to trust some of them, be it on a personal level or a business level; trust has proven to be one of the most important ingredients in communication recipe between individuals. In fact; I consider it to be the most important one.

Think about it; where would we be without trust? How would we live comfortably if we had to doubt everything and everyone around us? How would it be feasible for us to go on in life if we did not have people we can count on? If we think that our families and friends could double cross us any time, how would we deal with them? How can we move forward if we are paranoid of being stabbed in the back?

Trust is like an unwritten agreement between people; you don’t have to have a contract with everyone to be able to trust them, actually; I believe that if you do need such a piece of paper to reassure you, then this is the biggest proof that you do not trust these individuals and that’s why you needed what they promised you in writing so that you can hold them to it, you are expecting their double cross and you want to be prepared.

When you do trust someone; his word is enough and more binding than a thousand useless pieces of paper. They used to say that a man is bound by the words he says and they are considered commitments that he cannot and will not turn his back on. Men used words for business deals and the commitment was always: “I give you my word.”

Of course when someone breaks up the promise; there is nothing you can do about it but it does not feel good, in fact it feels lousy and tastes like crap.

There are so many people out there who promise you so many things and give you their word for it, but they seldom come through, and when they do break their promises; their justification is that the agreement they had with you and have been going by for sometime now is not working for them any more and that’s why they are changing the rules of the game. You don’t like that? Well, tough luck dude; they call the shots and if you don’t accept it, the agreement is already broken and you are as worthless as the promise they gave you.

Sometimes I think to myself that most of the things that happen in my life should not happen in the first place and I wonder if it is my fault that they do happen; maybe I should stop being too nice as my ex-boss once told me; he said that my main problem in life is that I was too nice and that I should take courses on how to be tough with people. I really wonder if he was right all along.

Broken promises are in fact grounds for major break ups in relationships and arrangements, but it seems that honor is something of the past and one should not count on others’ sense of decency and consideration. Such people are teaching us selfishness in its ugliest shapes and we all know that it is foolish and dumb to expect something to come out of selfish people because they only serve themselves and their own best interests regardless of how this might affect others.

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