[dlaxague]

What a sad week. I send thoughts and prayers to everyone who is hurting.

I don't post often and don't feel enough like a part of the list to be entitled to weigh in on the memorial page issue but I'm going to do so anyway. It's just an opinion, not a vote. You all who work so hard to support each other on a regular basis are the ones who should have some say.

Is a memorial page a sad thing? Of COURSE it's a sad thing - it's normal and right to feel sadness about losses. It's normal and right to want to share words and thoughts and prayers about loved ones who have died. Personally, I'm not enthusiastic about formal memorial stuff because I like to think that the most important part of honoring and loving the dead person happens within my heart - I hold them there and remember them there. But I do understand and support the need to have formal memorials. Just like funerals, they are of great comfort to many.

Is it a scary thing to have a memorial section or page? Not at all, to my way of thinking. What is scary is cancer. But we can't change the fact that cancer is scary. We CAN, however, help each other get past that fear.

When I was first diagnosed, just as many others have said, I was terrified and full of fear. Fear of dying, fear of illness, fear of dependence, fear especially for the loss that my kids would experience if I died. What helped me? It wasn't finding hope that I wouldn't die of cancer. I knew that no one could tell me whether I would die of cancer.

What helped me was finding women (and men) living with advanced cancer and living so wonderfully. Living fully and with great love for life and for each other. Online, and later in person, I met people who were dying, or whose loved one was dying. What a rich and wonderful gift they have to give us, as they share the experience and help us realize that this, too, is something we can all do, when we have to. (and of course, we will all have to - life is terminal and we are all dying) Not of course that we want have to do it, but that it's entirely do-able. Entirely "normal". Incredibly sad but also incredibly rich and full of love.

Our society does not support us well, in the experience of death and grief. Our society supports fear and avoidance, as if by refusing to recognize death as part of the cycle of life, we can save ourselves from the pain. I think that it's the exact opposite The more that we hide death (and dying, and grief) - the scarier it seems to us, and more scared we are - the more we hurt.

Sometimes when I get caught up in fear, for a loved one or for myself, it helps me to remind myself that whatever is to come, this moment right now is what I have. Do I want to waste this moment in a panic over what could happen, or do I want to trust that whatever happens will be do-able. I've learned, from such wonderful teachers - about savoring the moments and about the deep capacity for love and endurance that exists in all of us. I wouldn't have learned these things if I hadn't had the opportunity to become closer to death. I wouldn't have learned these things if others hadn't shown me the way, through their words and their actions as losses happened. I think that memorial pages, and discussions of issues around death and dying, are wonderful and healing ways to share love and support I think that exploring these issues offers more support and healing than a million posts about treatment successes. But that's just me. I do understand there are other points of view.

Debbie Laxague