When I traveled to Florida for my best friend's 24th birthday, I had visions of college debauchery and beaches. What I didn't expect was CT scans and stool samples. But that's what happens when someone you love has cancer. You don't make the plans; cancer does. At 24 I was invincible. I didn't have time for death. Death was something so far off; an abstract concept to be considered later.But that's what death does. It shakes us loose of our comfort, it causes us to pause, to re-evaluate, to question and to examine. It strips away the chaos of daily life and leaves us naked, facing our own frailty. But the more we come to terms with death and accept our mortality, the better prepared we are to live life. To accept death is to grasp freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. -Montaigne-