Not a Good Week

I don't generally read the LA Times, but we've been living here long enough that I started scanning the online version recently.

I'm still processing Tuesday's news, and so it was especially upsetting to see this today on the paper's homepage:

Mary Susan Herczog, who wrote with poignancy and wit on having breast cancer, dies at 45

I didn't know Mary, or her website, CancerChick.com. But she was diagnosed at 33, and died at 45. Randi was diagnosed at 32 and died in her mid-forties.

Those numbers hit very close to home.

I could live another 60 years. I know that. I hope for that. I plan for that.

And most of the time I don't sit around and contemplate my mortality.

But it would be dishonest for me to say that this double dose of tragic news didn't make me do just that.

For a little while, at least.

I always come back to the same place: I face just as much uncertainty as anyone else.

I just have more reminders of it than most.