My sister in law

[hyphenate]

just had major surgery. She, like me, is 49 years old, and she had colorectal cancer. Pretty much everything was removed to make sure there was no cancer remaining, and she has to have a permanent colostomy bag now. She is philosophical about it--her mom was her age and died from colon cancer, so Barbie is mainly happy to be alive--she was in stage III, where the cancer had already gotten into her lymph nodes, but not spread to the rest of her organs.

Many of us feel numb--here is a woman who has taken far better care of herself than the rest of us, and yet she is the one closest to the grim reaper. I might have heart disease, but a steady amount of medicines control that much better than someone with cancer.

And with several other deaths close to me over the past three years, it's been made clear to me about one thing: don't leave things for another day unless it's not really that important. Live in the NOW, not in the LATER. Because we can never be sure if that "LATER" will ever be there when we want it to be!