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Through My Eyes

Through My Eyes

Author: By Kasia Yoko
Date: 2025-11-03

Lately, death has been far too close. I?ve lost a dear friend to cancer. Last month two of my immediate neighbours passed away on the same day, both to the same cruel disease. It feels as if cancer has moved into our lives uninvited, taking up too much space, too much air, too much of our hope. I am shaken, heartbroken, and, above all, deeply saddened by how many lives this disease continues to claim each day.

Cancer is not a statistic, in South Africa, more than 100,000 people are diagnosed with cancer every year. Those numbers - reported by the National Cancer Registry - are not just figures on an annual report, they are mothers, fathers, sisters, sons, and friends. They are the people we love.

Beyond the physical pain and emotional wreckage lies another reality that is rarely spoken about: the cost of survival. Treatment is brutally expensive - often surpassing R1 million a year when advanced therapies are needed. For the 84% of South Africans who do not have medical aid, that figure may as well be a death sentence. Even for those who do, the system is not built for compassion. It?s built for numbers.

It's so hard to keep the mind of 'What if'... narrative in my mind. What if I get sick? What if, I use a lot of willpower to stay off those thoughts; I refuse to let fear take root. I have seen enough loss to know that life is too fragile to live in half-measures. The only sane response to such devastation is gratitude - fierce, unrelenting gratitude for every single breathe, every shared smile, every ordinary miracle that still greets us each morning.

So I choose to live, just for today, for this very moment - not cautiously, not conditionally, but wholly. I choose to marvel at the sun spilling over the ocean. I choose to sit longer with the people I love, to say yes to small joys, and to find beauty even in the cracks of an imperfect world. Because if cancer has taught me anything, it?s that we cannot wait for life to become easy or fair before we start living.

"Let us not be paralysed by fear of what might come." My bestie recently said. "Let us, instead, live so fully that even loss cannot erase our presence. May we honour those we?ve lost not with tears alone, but with courage - by waking up each day determined to live the kind of life that reminds others what it means to be truly alive" He concluded.

Fly high and surf hard Tommy Osborne. Thank you for our time around my kitchen table and those sweaty Padel games we shared, you will be missed by everyone at The Royal Quarter.

We cannot outlive death - but we can outshine it.