If Today Were My Last Day, I’d Choose the Funnel Cake

(originally drafted 5/2024)

I remember the moment.

My grandfather lay quietly in his hospital bed, between treatments for advanced stage lung disease, adjusting to the possibility that he might soon be approaching the end of his life. I was a first-year graduate student, trying to make sense of loss, love, and the ways families attempt to care for one another when words no longer seem sufficient.

Each of us wanted to ease his suffering in whatever ways we could.

At one point, he mentioned that he had a taste for a hotdog.

The medical team had understandable concerns about what he should be eating at that stage, and my family wanted to honor those recommendations. But I remember thinking something entirely different.

Give him the hotdog.

If someone is nearing the end of their life, and a simple meal brings comfort or joy, let them have it.

Looking at him, I wasn't thinking about nutrition. I was thinking about decades of kindness, generosity, laughter, and love. I was already grieving the absence of someone who was still sitting before me.

Years later, that memory unexpectedly returned.

It wasn't in a hospital room.

It was standing beside my daughter at Six Flags Great America.

As we debated whether to share a funnel cake, I realized that the conversation happening inside of me wasn't really about dessert.

I had recently recommitted myself to caring for my health, and on the surface the decision seemed simple. But suddenly I was flooded with something much deeper than craving.

The smell.

The sweetness.

The excitement.

Childhood summers.

Family outings.

Joy.

It wasn't just a funnel cake anymore.

It had become a doorway to another time.

Without realizing it, I found myself making the same emotional argument I had once made for my grandfather:

Life is short.

We deserve to live fully.

What if tomorrow never comes?

That moment invited me into an unexpected conversation with myself.

I realized this wasn't really about whether to eat the funnel cake. It was about the stories we tell ourselves when we're trying to create meaningful change.

As a psychotherapist with a growing interest in nutrition, mental health, and metabolic wellbeing, I've come to appreciate that lasting change is rarely built on willpower alone. It asks something deeper of us.

Not perfection.

Not fear.

Not urgency.

Hope.

The quiet belief that healing is possible.

That meaningful change can happen one small decision at a time.

That the future is worth investing in.

And perhaps most importantly—

That we are worth investing in.

Maybe the opposite of "life is short" isn't forgetting to savor today.

Maybe it's trusting ourselves enough to believe that, with grace, we are also creating a tomorrow worth caring for.

A Gentle Offering

May we trust that a meaningful life is not built in one extraordinary choice, but in the quiet accumulation of small, loving decisions made on behalf of our future selves.