Lily,
I have to admit that no one asked my wife any of those questions in my case but I have brought up some of those issues with friends whose spouses are dealing with late stage cancer. There are complicated legal issues when dealing with a life threatening disease and setting up a living trust, will and advanced directives are something that all of us should do - cancer or not. It was certainly tacky for anyone to ask you whether you plan to remarry (I have to admit also that I have told my wife that she should remarry if anything happens to me).

I too am concerned about his weight loss. Most people lose weight during chemo and radiation. I lost over 60 lbs. myself (I didn't have surgery). Why has he lost so much weight pre rad?

I think that you do have a little denial - SCC is a serious illness. People die here all the time, but to balance that out many people here aslo survive and many of them are late staged like myself.

People can be darn mean, idiots and insensitive (I might add). We even see a few of those here from time to time.

I think that most of us had similar surprising experiences. Good friends vanishing into the woodwork and people you didn't expect rising to the occasion. Some people just have the gift of mercy and others don't. Some are downright scared about being up close and personal with this sort of thing and if your friends are in the same age group. this is pretty young to have a peer with a life threatening disease. I am in my late 50's and have had more than a few friends pass away at this point - the biggest shock of my life was when a very dear friend passed away suddenly of a heart attack at the ripe old age of 38 - I was about the same age at the time and it really stunned me. I don't remember ever having any friends with cancer until I hit my 50's and most of them occured at the same time I was dealing with mine.

I kept people in the loop by sending out regular emails. I didn't have to talk and didn't have to repeat the story dozens of times. Some couldn't even handle that and requested to be removed from the distribution list.

People can say incredibly stupid things when people die as well because they are at a loss for words and seem to have to fill the space with something (even if if doesn't reflect their actual IQ). Stuff like -"Oh it's a blessing that they aren't suffering anymore" or "He(she) lived a long full life". How is this supposed to alleviate the grief? I'm not talking about spouses or sons and daughters saying this but well meaning people who are somewhat disconnected from the immediate family.

Maybe your task is to educate them since you are a forerunner of things to come for them as well.