DEATH...and TAXES

Perhaps this is a stupid title for this blog. Doesn't have anything to do with taxes, except for the certainty that accompanies both titular items.

It's been a weird month for me. I had to go to two wakes in the span of about 10 days, and I have a third tomorrow.

The first two hit close to home. The first was a very good friend of mine, one of my best friends, actually. John was 54 and I had been playing in bands with him since probably 1987. John developed lymphoma in his lungs, and they had a hard time getting a diagnosis at first, which cost him valuable time getting started with treatment. After two years, it finally got the better of him. He passed away on July 7th in the evening.

The second was the wife of a high school friend. I was very close to Bill in those long past years, but we're not that old that death seems normal for us. Bill's wife was 43 when she died. She was also fighting cancer; hers was adrenal cancer. Rare, and she didn't respond well to treatment. She did live 4 years with it. My old friend looked lost at the wake, in another world. I don't even want to think about what he may have been going through.

The third is my mother's cousin. Mickey was in his 70's, I think, and died after a short fight with liver cancer. At least he lived his life. I'll be taking my mother to the wake, but she isn't sure she'll be able to go up to the casket. She doesn't know if she can take looking at him, less than a year after my father's death.

My father passed just before Christmas 2005. He died of esophageal carcinoma after approximately two years of fighting it. He was 81 years old.

A lot of cancer. Too much, it seems to me. It's almost scary...like, not if, but when it's gonna get you. You go to the doctor, get checkups, watch what you eat, control your cholesterol, etc etc, and then what?

Anyway, all we can do is take each day as it comes. Death, like taxes, is a certainty eventually.