Death and Cancer

Today I met with my counterpart at the Seattle Times Agency. She's in charge of getting all the ads sold for seattlepi.com, plus she runs a similar site to ours. We used to squabble about a lot of little things. But then Mark got cancer and we started talking about that at our meetings before getting down to business.

Nancy's dad has cancer, and all through the spring, she was telling me about an experimental therapy she was taking him to get at M.D. Anderson cancer center in Texas. We crossed our fingers and toes up until three or four weeks ago, when she told me tests showed her dad's cancer was back. She found that out a few days after her boss and close friend died -- and the day of his memorial service.

Today I brought her a bunch of yellow and purple flowers I got her at the Safeway. I stuck it in one the vases that came with all the flowers everybody sent to Mark after he got sick. (One little known side-effect of cancer: vase proliferation).

We sat down and talked about Mark and her dad and my dad and her close friends in Colorado and California all of whom have cancer. We talked about Sartre and the existential crisis, and how stupid it seems every Monday to get up and go to work. Seeing as how we're all dying and all, shouldn't we be doing something more meaningful than sorting out the details of ads with our remaining time?

A few minutes before our meeting time was up we said "oh crap! Did you have any business to discuss?"

We finished up with that stuff in under a minute, hugged and said good-bye.

We didn't squabble about anything. We never do any more.

And so.