what's there to complain about?

I gazed at her hair, longer than mine, I wanted it.
Two days later, it was gone all of it.

One week earlier, she was at the beach with her three kids.
She lived a normal life.
Taking her kids to dance practice, and teaching them how to read. 

She seized, went to the doctor, they found a golf ball sized tumor in her brain. 
Surgery went, along with the luscious locks I desired days earlier. 
Just devastating.

Three weeks later we had our annual family reunion.
Was she going to be there?
Would she go out in public?
Everyone wondered.

But up she came with her three little kids.
Her scarves and hats came too.
She wasn't ashamed of who she was.
She wasn't defined by her looks.
And she sure as hell wasn't defeated.

This is my aunt.
She survived cancer.
Twice.
Two different places in her little human body. 
Thyroid and brain.
She's been through enough.

And you know what she said to me after all this?

"Own your situation because it is what it is."