Category: Uncategorized

Well, Friends, this post is going to be a little different …because you readers are going to be part of it.

One of my dearest friends was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and was told there wasn’t much hope…actually about 2% even with chemo and radiation.  Not much to look forward to.

She and I have been the best and closest of friends… we celebrated a whole bunch of life together, and we buried friends and family together.  Now, we have to face the coldest, hardest,  fact of life…. death.. together as well.

It’s always difficult to offer the appropriate condolences to family, friends, loved ones, acquaintances……but what do you say to your dearest friend when she still has time left….we just don’t know how much?  It beats the hell out of me.  I’ll think it thru on the way to her house this Wednesday…and probably won’t come up with a plan.  So, I’ll turn to my two old friends, drugs and alcohol…say a prayer to St. Joseph (the patron saint of a happy death)  and give it my best shot.

That being said, this totally sucks…and I’m very, very sad.  We stand and cry at funerals and memorial services…not so much for the one who has passed, but for ourselves.  Ourselves as well as our loved ones when we face that final chapter in our lives.  So, I’ll close with this, from John Donne:  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Johnson Long