These last two months or so, it seems every time I pick up the phone there's more bad news waiting on the other end. I swear if my head wasn't screwed on straight, I'd be in the looney bin.

In May alone, I lost 4 friends/family through cancer and other things. Now THAT was a bad month!

I made a promise to myself to use this blog as a bit of an offloading point so I can let these tidbits of news float off me so I can let the emotion go and be positive and rational. I find that you can't really offload everything to friends as no matter how positive you are, you still end up depressing the other person and after a while they self destruct. Or you get the 'Ohh, gee, sorry to hear your bad news' tripe so often you just know it's not genuine.

Anyway...today's news. My cousin Sandi is losing her battle with cancer. She has been amazingly valiant in her fight. 5 years of chemo, but on Friday the doctor advised her that things are not going well. She now has large tumours all over her back and it's in the bone. 5 years ago, she was given 6 months to live. Her type of cancer is in the lining of the organs. Never been able to figure out exactly what that means, but it ain't good anyway. She's only 54. To top things off, her eldest son just lost his girlfriend in a freak tiki-torch accident in May. He's a mess and has had to move back home to recover. And her husband has ALS and is no longer able to walk. That family has had more bad luck that I can even begin to describe. Sandi is such a fantastic and courageous person. She is still working! While I would have left years ago, she works in a hospital and has only taken the 3 days after chemo off and continued as best she could. She has taken a few leaves of absences here and there - when her husband was diagnosed, and recently to be with her son and his girlfriend in her last hours. But now to hear that the cancer has taken such a serious hold just makes me want to cry. Yes, she's had 5 years she wouldn't normally have had, but cancer is just so insidious.

The other news involved my ex's family whom I'm still close with. Lorraine (my ex ma-in-law and the sweetest yet spinniest lady you'll ever meet) has been in the hospital all day with her mom, who's 91. Sometime during the night, Nana fell and broke her pelvis. She somehow had birdseed imbedded in her face and arm as well. God knows how that happened, but it seems like she was trying to clean up the laundry room in the middle of the night and lost her balance. The hospital can't/won't operate due to her age. This story is still brewing though...lots to deal with there. Whether or not she should go into a home, etc. Parental mortality is so tough!

Oh, and while we're on the subject of crappy news....my best friend's sister. Long story there and too tired to go into, but her house burned down a couple weekends ago. Pranksters, molotov cocktail. Never a good mix. So they're staying in a hotel. Tonight they went out to the van in the parking lot to find...wait, what van? Some a-hole stole it. Like losing their house and all their worldly possessions wasn't enough? There were some heirlooms in there too, that they had salvaged from the house and hadn't taken out yet. Her mom's wedding ring, her grandmother's brooch. Sure, easy to say, they should have taken it out, but they didn't.

But you know as much as life deals some rotten blows, there is still such amazing beauty in this world. I looked into my grandniece's eyes tonight and saw such raw innocence and good that I just know that tomorrow will be a better day.