My mother & Charlie my African Grey Parrot 

I hate cancer.....

Lung cancer took my mother's life on 5/11/05 & she fought it for 14 months prior to her death. Yes, she was a smoker, although she had quit a few years prior to her death. Cancer is not a common killer in my mother's family and there is no doubt in my mind her lung cancer was due to her smoking. It was somewhat ironic that she got lung cancer when she did--several years after quitting smoking.

Cancer is an ugly illness and it seems to be inside everyone & everything I love now. I had to put one of my dogs, a Miniature Schnauzer named Cosmo, to sleep on 6/21/05 because he was ill with lymphoma. A few years ago my mother-in-law found out she had kidney cancer and had to have a kidney removed. My aunt has been fighting breast cancer on & off for years now. My paternal grandfather died of pancreatic cancer many years ago.

I hate cancer. I wish I could make it disappear from the world this instant. I don't see anything positive that comes from cancer in any of its many forms. I read a "inspiring" piece in a Usenet group about cancer not too long ago called "The Gift". The person who wrote it developed some type of cancer and they considered it to be some kind of "gift" because it opened their eyes to a lot of things in life. Well, there is no way in Hell that or my mother thought her cancer was any kind of uplifting or eye-opening gift. We both thought it was a terrible thing that would (and did) eventually kill her and neither of us found anything pleasant or thankful in that.

About the only good thing I can think of that was a result of her cancer was that it brought my sibling & I closer together before and after Mom's death. It brought each of us closer to her while she was still alive..but why didn't any of realize the importance of our relationships to one another while Mom was still alive? Why did it take a horrible, fatal illness to open our eyes to things?

I know I'll never find answers to questions like that--and that sucks.