Hi all,

It is very nearly three years now since my cancer "thing" started. I consider myself blessed by the people here. The extremes of emotion, the love of fellow humans, and most of all the sharing of life. It has contributed to my understanding of why we are here. I am most intrigued by the recent posts about anger. I find anger is perhaps the most usless emotion besides worry. Not that I don't understand being angry, but that we still hold on to it? we can go about life with a "why me" chip on our sholder but we miss the value in what is going on.

Several years ago there was a story in our newspaper about a local woman in the last stages of breast cancer. Her picture was that of a thin, weary patient, Her head wrapped in a scarf. She was sitting in her back yard for the interview and only had a month or two left. When the reporter asked her how she felt about what life dealt her at her 50 or so years, Se said "life would be incredibly boring if we all KNEW we would live to 90 and then just drop". We would miss out on the color and texture of life. We would miss out on the chance to say the things we say to loved ones. She didn't have any anger about what was happening to her.

I wish I had saved that story. I didn't know about my cancer at the time I read it, but I thought about her wisdom and her sense of what life is. What she said was brilliant and it has helped me many a time during the last 36 months. The tragic things that happen to us are the glue that keeps us humans together. Sad sometimes? Yes. I happen to think that crying is incredibly healthy. Much much better than anger.