Un Ange Passe

In 1995 she was given two years, but being young and strong, her doctors applied the most aggressive techniques; she was spared, it seemd. Cancer is eminently adaptable, however, and despite optimistic remissions, resurfaced again and again.

In late August, she was given an awful diagnosis: "months." She did not last even one. The remaining available treatments had such awful side effects--and so little efficacy--that the cancer, i.e., Death, became preferable; she entered a home hospice program on September 24, passing on the evening of September 29, her husband at her side, her sister upstairs brushing her teeth. She was just a few days shy of her 39th birthday.

Her blog is factual, not emotional, but the facts about the oxygen tanks and the difficulty breathing or focusing or reading are deeply painful, deeply lonely (but not, as far as I can tell, afraid). Go, and be with G-d.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.