I HATE cancer...

It's a very bad day.

I called my dear friend, Jennie, today. I've been very worried about her and her husband. Bob has pancreatic cancer. When we left Washington, he was doing remarkably well. Still working. Still strong. Still just being Bob.

Something in the last few weeks has just gone drastically wrong, and now he can't keep down food... Things sounded terribly bad when I talked to Jenn, today, and Jennie sounded beside herself with the loneliness and pressure of it all.

And here I am in Illinois. It seems like I'm always in the wrong place. If only I could be there to fix them dinners, or to just go sit with Bob, or to go over and hug Jennie on the bad days.

I keep thinking of the photos of Carolyn that we have... Pictures of her with Mom, Pictures of her with Grandpa Roseberry. We have pictures of her with Bob too.... I am really hoping that Bob will rally--for his sake, and Jennie's of course, but I keep thinking that I don't want any more pictures in our collection of those photos where Carolyn is being held by people that we love who can't be with us anymore.

Then I logged onto the LC Message board, and we lost another of our most vibrant, beautiful, amazingly strong members... And the wife of one of our caregiver members as well. I keep going back to read Leslie's posts. She was the champion of the 'survivor' forum. She was always posting little things about survivorship--about each day being a victory. And she always celebrated other people's anniversaries in the fight against their cancer. And now she's gone.

I am just so ANGRY at what this does to people. I'm so ANGRY at the every day worry and fear that I have now--that so many people have. I'm so angry at the pain and devestation and depression that my friends and family who've been diagnosed have had to endure. I'm so angry about the holes in the lives of caregivers who've lost the one they cared for. I'm so angry that my Mom isn't here to see Carolyn trying to walk, and to talk to on the nights that I miss Andy, and to complain about how lousy the last season of West Wing has been. I'm SOOO ANGRY.

I wish I knew how to channel that anger. I wish I knew of a good place to focus it. I wish I could focus it directly AT CANCER and that somehow could help cause it to be eradicated.

And aside from the anger, tonight I feel a profound sense of homesickness. I'm homesick for the place beyond this life--the place with no cancer, or sickness, or pain, or tears. Larry Crabb says we have to feel the full disappointment of this life to be fully invested in the hope that comes in the next place. I am certainly feeling it. We were made to be eternal... This transient stuff sucks.