I was messaging a friend throughout this week regarding the death of her boyfriend’s best friend from cancer earlier this week. This friend had been battling cancer for quite some time, and he finally passed away this past Sunday morning. It’s always sad and difficult when someone you are close to and love passes away, especially when there were so many years of shared love between you. It’s even harder when that person dies, and you can’t even be there at the end of their life, and even at their funeral for a last goodbye.

He wasn’t too far away. He and his wife lived in St. Louis. The plane ride to get there wouldn’t take too long, but the more we talked, I realized the main reason they couldn’t go was that it’d be too expensive to fly there at a moment’s notice for them. I felt really terrible when she said this, realizing that money was the main reason they couldn’t be there to say a final goodbye and to help comfort their late friend’s wife. This is when earning more than enough money just “to get by” really matters, I thought. This is when money itself actually matters. Money gives you the freedom to make choices like this in cases of emergencies and things out of your control. And they don’t have this freedom because of the jobs they’ve chosen.

We all make our own choices, right? And I guess we have to live by them, for better or worse, and when we aren’t happy with the choices we’ve made, we have to change them. When I look back at the time when Ed passed away, I would have ended my own life before I wouldn’t have been there that terrible week… to be there for my parents, to say farewell to the brother I loved so much for over 27.5 years of my life. It wouldn’t have mattered if it cost $800 or $8,000 to be there; I had to be there no matter what. But I chose a job and a profession that allowed me that ability. And not everyone has that. But if I were in that situation where I had to go into debt to be there, I’d probably reexamine my life and how I live it and make sure that if this ever happened again, I wouldn’t have to get to that point of not having that freedom.