Natalie Pauline Agustin
–@nalieagustin
November 7, 1988 – March 22, 2022 🕊
I don’t want to be remembered for the clothes I wear, the things I own, the places I’ve been. I don’t want to be remembered for how I tie a headscarf or how well I pull off short hair. I don’t want to be remembered for the products I recommend, the treatments I have undergone, or even the remedies I practice to heal. I especially don’t want to be remembered for having cancer.
I want to be remembered by how I made you feel in my presence. I want to be known as the one who remembered your birthday and went all out to make it special. I want to be remembered for every time I made you smile or cry tears of joy. I want to be remembered for always giving it my best and, despite how I felt or what was said, I never stopped believing in me – and you. I want to be remembered for the way I loved, purely with all my heart and without barriers. I want to be remembered for the impact I made in your life.
I don’t want to be admired, I want you to feel inspired.
Through you and your inspired-living is how I wish to leave my legacy.
thediaryofnalie.com
To be continued…
“The Diary of Nalie”
The above caption accompanied a beautiful picture of Nalie, a young woman whose journey I’ve been following on IG for a few years.
It brought me to tears and I wept like I did when my bestie Lakia Renee Felix bka Lark died from complications to cancer 8 years ago. I wept because I knew Nalie. We all did! (To be clear, we’ve never met but we’re besties in my head, k?!) I wept because my sisterfriend Lakia could have written the very same words. It’s with deep sympathy I mourn our departed loved and treasured friends, daughters, wives, girlfriends, sisters or whatever other role they played in our lives.
And it’s with a twinge of sadness that I overlooked the now unthinkable: that my sisterfriend would not have wanted to be remembered that way, either. Not for the treatments she underwent or the time spent in the hospital or in hospice. But instead, the joy she emoted, the laughs we shared while living our best 20-something lives getting ready to hit the clurb (think club, but way younger!), the birthday parties she threw for herself (honestly, who does that?! 😂), the love she had for her son and she’d lay and stare at him for hours, the silly Lakia-isms including but not limiting to always trying to bite or pinch someone (wait, that was me trying to bite her but I di-Jo… 🤣), the random text messages checking on you or- gasp!- apologizing to you because she took so long to respond to your message even though it’d only been 6 hours (girl, bye!). (Side note: Lark didn’t know nothing about COVID?! Sorry, I di-jo again because I can only imagine how that would’ve changed so much. What if… is a terrible game, though.)
Death is a part of life, yes, but does that simple truth make it easier when someone departs this world and enters the afterlife? No.
My much older sisterfriend Lark (JK, it she was only a couple years older but the rise it got outta her still makes me giggle like a school girl!) died at 34 years and 20 days old. She died just 3 weeks after her birthday, one of her favorite holidays (did you catch that part about her throwing her own birthday parties? The woman meant b’ness!)!
As a kid, I didn’t understand when people said adults die prematurely because everyone dies I thought, but that’s because when I was young, everyone was just… Old! I’m (only) 39, but I get it now. I was 31 when Lark died and I’ve already outlived a dear friend. And that shit changes you. It must. Love has gotta be one of, if thee (not the!) single strongest and biggest decisions we’ll ever make in our lives. And how we live after our loved ones die is, in part, a reflection of their legacy. How we choose to honor our loved ones life by how we live ours is part of their legacy. It is their legacy.*
Now I choose to live life as Lark did: glass always full because water is a’ plenty*! And so is joy and peace and fun and calm and rest and faith and family and friends and love and vacations and Patriots games and game night and laughter and… And… And… This isn’t to say she lived a perfect life because that only exists in our imaginations, but it is to say that despite the way life be life’ing (umm COVID anyone?! Financial obligations? Chores?!), I, like Lark, choose to see the positive: “ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8
(*Side note: I’ll save the stories about how I binged Lark’s favorite foods for a while after her death had me all the way f*cked up for a while, but that’s a whole ‘nother post. 😰 But please know that my journey to becoming who I am now didn’t happen overnight for me. For anyone! It took yearsss because love, when done right like with Lark, is overwhelming. Love changes you because you want to be better for the people who love you. But the grief? Oh bayby, the grief that ensues after the death of a loved one is just as enveloping as the love because grief serves as a reminder of the love that is not “lost”, but has most certainly taken new form. You have to learn how to live in that. Nothing about it comes organically.)
Tonight I wept for someone I don’t know personally because of someone I did. I wept because I witnessed from Nalie on a similar journey that Lark was on. I wept for her because I intimately know of the story she shared. Because I was the sisterfriend in her pictures. I was her cheerleader. And tonight, I also weep for Nalie’s friends, family, social media followers, providers, and the lives of those she touched because there were many. So many who miss her. So many who are scared or worried about what her death means for their life. So many who missed the memo that life is fleeting. Finite. Temporary. I wept because two women died prematurely and it hurts. Grieving hurts. Morning hurts. Loss hurts.
If I’ve learned anything from my sisterfriends, it’s that life is to be lived and enjoyed. Cancer diagnosis or not, don’t wait for death. Don’t live dead. My hope is to be like Betty White: that if I were to die at 99, people would look at my life and say “But that wasn’t enough! She needed more time!”
May we decide to be bold and courageous like Lark and Nalie who chose to live life well on their terms no matter how scary or unpredictable or hard. May we honor their lives by living well. By living better. 🙏🏾
Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another chance to do tomorrow what he gave you the chance to do today.
Bishop Rosie O’neal
The rub is at some point, Lark and Nalie accepted their fate and knew death was imminent. But many don’t. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to live (no one does!) but I do my best to work through fear like my sisterfriends. My biggest, most lofty goal is to leave no stone unturned. To leave my gifts and talents and whatever else I have to offer on this side since I can’t take any of them with me when I leave this earth. To do what it takes to help women like myself do what I did. To help women reclaim their lives by making small lifestyle changes to live better.
So ask yourself: what do you want your legacy to be? Are you arrogant about time? Are you ready to become that healthier, sexier, more confident, bold version of yourself? You know the version of yourself you can’t seem to shake no matter how hard you’ve tried?
I got healthier by being bold and courageous. By doing things differently. Trying new ways of being. I have Lark to thank for teaching me a lesson I wouldn’t have learned without her: life is entirely far too short and far too precious to do or be something I hate for people to please people. People who don’t even love me or like me. She’s part of the reason I live better and healthier (I used to think I was healthy because I didn’t have a diagnosis but it turns out prediabetes is a diagnosis but I didn’t count it because pre- but that’s not how that works and I see that now 🙃). As you know, I’ve lost 100 lbs and it turns out that an unexpected benefit of weight lost was life gained.
Now that I know how much sweeter and more enjoyable life is when you’re actually healthy (for me, living in alignment in mind, body and in spirit) I can’t go back. I can’t unsee. I know the pain of being uncomfortable in your own skin. Being treated like the ugly friend (which doesn’t even make sense because I was obese, not ugly! Have you seen me?!), having to go way out of your way to shop at speciality stores which mostly have matronly clothing. The pang of discomfort and shock when you don’t recognize your own reflection.
I get it. And I desperately want to bring others along for the ride who are ready to begin this their journey of becoming. You’ve always been worthy and deserving, and if you’re anything like me, providers failed me time and time and time again, but I finally got it right. I finally figured out how to eat well. And how to move my body not as a punishment for the food I ate, but as praise for what I can do despite taking my body and myself for granted.
If you’re ready to get out of your own way or to lovingly push others outta your way who are standing in your way, then let’s talk. If you want help losing weight, reclaiming your beauty, your body and your confidence from someone who intimately knows your struggle (and who you can’t BS!), then you’ve found a right one. And if it’s not me, great! I support you doing what works for you to get you the healing and transformation you want and are oh so deserving of.
Wishing you nothing but the best and a lifetime of success (I LOVE an unintentional rhyme!)! XO,
Joval
