There were years when everybody was getting married. Those I grew up with, family, school friends, workmates.

And now the pendulum is swinging a different way, and I see cancer take people quickly or lingeringly. I had a friend; she was running marathons, went to the doctor with a headache, diagnosis and six weeks later she was gone.

I’ve had the philosophical framework available to me for years to see death as not something to worry over, but still, it hurts when someone who holds a piece of your heart is no longer there to talk to, to embrace, to share a walk along a beach…

B