[Dottore]

A powerful tribute Todd, and I thank you for it.

I wish you much strength and balance and good cheer in dealing with the days and weeks to come.

It's a hell of a thing, this end of days nonsense.

I lost my father two years ago, to an excruciating death from cancer. At the same time my mother slipped into the deep fog of dementia, where she remains, hanging on to life by the tips of her fingernails. My father-in-law—to whom I was very close—also died last year, unexpectedly, shortly followed by my favourite uncle.

I count 12 or 14 people as my very close friends. Four of them received a cancer diagnosis in the past year. I couldn't believe this news when it came in two week intervals....and then a couple of months later I received very my own cancer diagnosis at the tender age of 56.

Three of my four friends have recovered—as have I—at least for now—but one of them died.

I tell you, I am at the point where all this death is like a kind of parallel universe to the one I inhabit, and in which I function. And that is of course exactly what it is. It is out there. All the time. The other side of the coin. The other shore of the river of life.

I laugh about it sometimes, but it's still often a hollow kind of laugh. I firmly believe that laugh will get less and less hollow as the years pass on, and as the mystery and finality of death becomes increasingly familiar and commonplace.

My personal goal is to die laughing.

Stay strong.