I was reading in the NY Times that sadly, Brian Nelson has passed away. (I’m a NY Times junkie, wouldn’t you know?) He seemed like a very nice man, and had a great sense of humor about a disease that was killing him. But I started wondering about all the other people that get cancer. It’s almost like a mandate now, have a deadly disease but have a good attitude about it, or otherwise people will tune you out. I think I would be very angry, or at least, very depressed. I wonder what happens to all the natural feelings of grief.
Leif had a friend who recently passed away from cancer as well. Like Nelson, his face was incredibly puffy at the end as a side effect. He wore sunglasses all the time, as his eyes were extremely sensitive to light. He was also very positive–he had been give 3 or 6 months to live, but got another 5 years until he finally succumbed. He said he was writing a book–I wonder what became of it.
I just sort of wonder if there’s people out there with a deadly disease who write blogs along the line of “My life effing sucks because I’m going to die.” Or do all those get censored out from a collective consciousness that doesn’t want to deal with it?