I heard today that Jeff Healey died of cancer. He sang "Angel Eyes" which was my huge, huge torch song for this girl I dated in high school. In the tape deck on dates, at the prom, or on lonely drives through the winding back roads of Hangover County. It voiced that seemingly all-encompassing, blinding love you get in high school, that 'love-sickness.' In the end, we were a total trainwreck with enough chapters to fill a book. And not a 'happily ever after' kind of book. Think more along the lines of Bronte or a messed-up Henry James sort of way.

Still, there is always that song. For some reason it always takes me back to a moment where I believed I could hold the entirety of the world.

I was dumfounded to learn he was just seven years older than me. My heart goes out to his wife and children.

Never is cancer more heinous than when it comes after a child. My lovely sister, Rachel, told me about her husband's cousin's son. Shortly after being born, Tristen was diagnosed with Luekemia. Instead of getting to do all that new baby fun stuff, they're at the hospital helping Tristen fight. They change his diapers as soon as he urinates, because the pee is toxic due to the chemo. Any sores or rashes could lead to infection due his lowered immune system from the chemo, and he's just too tiny for a catheter. It's an awful, vicious cycle.

We're in that time of year where we like to think about the good things, about family, about giving. So, I ask you to give a little bit here, if you're able. Help them fight.

Dear John,
I went to your visitation tonight. “Visitation” feels like such the wrong word for it. Maybe it should be ‘viewing’ or something like that. I’m sure the subject has been debated by better minds than mine.

So there you were.

It didn’t look like you. It did, but it didn’t. You were never that tan; your lips weren’t that pink. I do not envy the undertaker’s profession. Perhaps it is a good thing, this disconnect between what I see before me and the mental image I carry of you in my head, smiling at church. It is as if to say, “It’s okay; he’s not here.”

I saw Chris. She looked better, more composed, than I could hope to under similar circumstances. She said you really loved us, and I did my best not to get choked up in front of her.

Some of us are taking care of the leaves out at your place, so don’t worry about that.

I stood in front of your coffin and told you how much you meant to me, how I wished I could have given back to you as much as you gave to me. Thank you. Why is it that we don’t have special occasions in life where you can tell people how much they mean to you while they’re still here? No, we’re just left with these feeble mumblings to a vacated corpse. There should be something like that, you know? Like: ‘Life Day’ or something.

But, no. That’s not the way it works out, is it? Even when we see it slowly coming. Cancer took away your fine golf swing, then it took your appetite, your breath and then your life.

And what are we left with? We’re left with the part I hate:

Goodbye.

On the flight back home today, I was mentally outlining a funny little trip-related post. After leaving the long-term parking lot, I got the call that my friend John was not doing well. Tonight I received word he lost his battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife.

May God bless and keep you safe.

i made the mistake the other night of watching one of those dateline-esque shows on tv; i'm a total sucka for stuff like that. i was flipping through the channels when the newscaster – i think it was connie chung? – was interviewing the mother of aj mclean, the backstreet boy who just went into rehab. of course anything pop culturey tickles my fancy, so i put down the remote, popped open a diet cherry coke, and settled in, expecting nothing more than entertainment from the surely tawdry stories of little mr pop star boozing it up after shows and shagging staggering numbers of teenybopper groupies.

half an hour and an empty can of DCC later, i was an asshole. this kid – i actually think he's a year or two older than me but anyway – has got issues, and it took an amazing amount of balls to pull himself out of the celebrity scene and admit that he needed help. it's a big risk, in terms of the band and touring and stuff like that – i mean, who knows if the fleeting fifteen minutes of boy band fame will hold out for him to get his shit together?

no matter how callous we may say it is to have the attitude, 'oh, he's a rich and famous celebrity, what problems can he have?', i think most people hold some version of that viewpoint, at least subconsciously. i mean, i myself was watching this hoping mostly for some "behind the music"-type cheap thrills. that's why i ended up feeling so guilty.

i was diagnosed with depression in december of 1999. who knows how long i was actually depressed before i got help. it came to the point where my set of norms reconfigured itself entirely around the way i was used to living. i didn't think twice about crying myself to sleep each night, and didn't think it abnormal when nothing i could think of held any sort of interest to me whatsoever.

the specific problems i have and am working through right now have a very specific, pinpoint-able instant of origin in my mother's battle with cancer. basically from the time i was 9 years old, the big C has played the enemy role in my life. as soon as i was able to understand what the disease could do –ie, take my mommy away- i started what has turned into a lifelong fight between clinging to her and pushing her away, and struggling for some kind of middle ground.

cancer in the family fucks everyone up. it's pushed my dad into silence, my sister from boyfriend to boyfriend, me into the ups and downs of depression, and my mother into any and everything imaginable. once you realistically begin to deal with the disease, there is an inescapable omnipresence around everything you do, whispering in your ear that no matter how good things are right now, you are always in danger of loss. and i think you involuntarily prepare yourself for that loss. and i'm in a weird position with that. because my mother has been amazingly fortunate in sustaining her fight for as long as she has, i've never had to deal with loss completely. the counselor i worked with at william and mary put it to me bluntly: i have spent the majority of my life going through a grieving process. it's like an infinite number of pinpricks to your leg, instead of just breaking it in one sickening crack.

before anyone begins to protest – I KNOW HOW LUCKY I AM. most people don't have the fortune to be with cancer patients for this long. and i wish for nothing more than for all of a sudden, someone to wave a sparkly magic wand somewhere and in a cloud of fairy dust and glitter, make my mommy all better again. but heaven (and hell) knows, life does not work like that.

and how, seemingly ridiculously, does this all relate back to my original subject matter of AJ from the backstreet boys? i feel for him – that's the bottom line. the day in which i really and truly sought help – cut out all the bullshit and recognized that i really had problems i needed someone to help me get through – was the most challenging day i have ever had. i can remember sitting on the floor of my room in the graduate complex, unable to stop crying. i'm talking HOURS. i literally could not move. it was december and i was supposed to be packing my things up to go home from school for winter vacation, and i was a desolate heap on the bedroom floor. i would stand up to try to pack some things up, but would end up staring confusedly at a sweater in my hand, not knowing what to do with it. eventually jen came over and packed my things for me, and tripp drove all the way down from richmond to pick me up. i can't tell you how much the things the two of them did made a difference. i needed to be taken care of, and they were there. it means more to me than either f them will ever be able to comprehend. there were so many people who told me i'd feel better soon, or nodded faux-consolingly as they looked out the window, or just ignored me. i wanted nothing more that day that to remain in a crumpled heap on the carpet and just melt into the floor and go to sleep forever, and jen and tripp wouldn't leave me alone.

my point is that before you can get help, you hit the lowest low ever. if that's what aj mclean, pop star extraordinaire, went through, then i am certainly in no place to make disparaging boy band and poor little rock star remarks. i'll give him props instead, and wish him the best. watching his mother talk about him made him into less of a pop culture icon and more of an actual person. he's someone's brother, somebody's baby.

i was fascinated with the way she talked about him, breaking him up into a dr jekyll – mr hyde copy of alex the good kid and aj the wild child. i've always been fascinated in things like this – the polar oppositions that exist within one person. the romantic era ideals were all about this – how the tiger and the lamb exist within each of us. for the first time, people began to recognize and celebrate humans as three-dimensional beings capable of being on the contrary of their own selves. i've always been a proponent of this: the madonna-whore complex, the romantic hookup, darth vader. even when i was little, i used to sign my diary entries with different names – all variations of my middle name. i was lisa when i felt like a cool kid, lizzie when i was being bookish and the teacher's pet, ellie when i felt like a two year old and elisabeth when i was adult and sophisticated. aj's mom did the same thing with aj/alex – but the coolest thing was when connie chung asked her, is there still room in aj (the dark side) for alex (the good kid)? she smiled faintly and said, the question was really the other way around. i liked her acknowledgement - both should exist.

virginia was one of my mother's close friends. they were co-workers at the office and self-described 'cancer-buddies', having been diagnosed with their initial bouts with breast cancer about 12 years ago, and sharing an equal number of recurrences over the subsequent years. virginia was also my boss at one of my first 'real ' summer jobs, overseeing my work as a clerk at the special ed testing clinic i worked for. she was firm and resolute, yet flaky, disorganized, and an optimist. she was dedicated to betterment - not only of her immediate surroundings but of the world as a whole. she fought hard for children and their general welfare and led others to do the same. she and my mother would make jokes together about wigs and chemo food cravings, giggling and murmuring together in a private and sacred clique of two.

my mother called me sunday night to tell me that morning virginia has passed away that morning. while mommy is currently in somewhat of a holding pattern of 4 weeks on chemotheraphy followed my four weeks off, virginia's decline over the past year had been steady. at one point, sick of the nausea and aches and heaches of treatment, she took herself off all medicines and procedures, against all doctors' orders. i can't get that thought out of my head; the action personified her existence. she made up her mind, wanted to feel better immediately, and went for it, all else be damned. the resolute nature that occocasionally frustrated me so much as an employee made her a pillar of somewhat untraditional strength.

her funeral service is tonight.