Lost: one sense of humor; dark and occasionally caustic. Dry with lots of statement of the obvious. Tonight, I can’t even begin to find the funny, be the funny. I’m angry; I’m anger personified.

A friend of mine is sick. She’s been sick for quite some time. She’s also younger than I am, and I’m a mere slip of a girl at 36. She’s been, for years now, the kind of sick that’s almost invisible. She seemed fine, looked fine, sounded fine; it was hard to tell what was working away inside. I remember when my brother-in-law had lymphoma, it was the same way. Tough to tell; impossible to accept.

My friend has been having a rough year and no longer looks or sounds fine. It’s wearing her down. She’s tired of illness, research, talking about options, taking meds and dealing with this beast that will not leave her alone. She’s sick enough that I need to try to not make her laugh, so I don’t cause her more pain.

Today my thoughts of her have filled every gap between other thoughts, words and actions. I miss her, because she lives 800 miles away. I feel helpless because I can’t help her in all the normal, little ways that friends who live in the same town can. She’s as stubborn as a crotchety old lady and can turn a conversation around, evading questions, slick as a born politician. Tonight we talked and I tried to swallow my anger for a bit, tried to channel the positive energy, tried to make her feel better somehow. I’m angry out of frustration and completely pissed off at this disease that has already taken one young person from our lives.

So I’m on humor hiatus for a bit, biting my lip, wiping tears and trying to be positive, productive, etc. I love my friend; I hate cancer.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 5:26 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.