It’s been years since I’ve been at home in Seattle in early September.  It’s lovely.  The back yard is mostly still lush green with just bare tips of red starting to show up on the Japanese maples.

I have to say it’s very strange to be at home during on-sale week, but it was a good decision.  My shoulder isn’t up to being out on the road.  I’m getting a little more range of motion, but it seems to be one step forward and two steps back.  However, while I’m here whining about my ailing shoulder, one of my good friends is looking down the barrel at a recurrence of breast cancer.  So quit your bitchin’, Judy.

I know that people come to my blog on Friday mornings for a little bit of sweetness and light, but I’m just not feeling it today.  What I’d really like to do is haul off and smack somebody, because this is SO unfair.

My friend stood by her man, a Viet Nam vet, during the ten years he fought a losing battle with Agent Orange induced brain cancer.  She put her life and ambitions to one side, in favor of caring for him.  This should be her time now.  Instead, she’s left to fight this fight on her own.  She has kids, but that’s not the same as having a partner—someone who has your back no matter what.

I’m pissed that the cancer-inhibiting drugs that have made her life miserable for the past year DIDN’T DO THEIR JOB!!!  And I have no idea how she will decide to deal with this—whether she’ll dig in and fight tooth and nail or if she’ll step away and opt for as much quality of life as there is out there.  Those are decisions she’ll have to make with her kids, her doctors and her God—because she is a woman of faith.  Has always been a woman of faith.  And if I were in her shoes, I have no idea how I’d choose, either.  Not my business to say.

But I’ve been sitting here thinking about her today—thoughts and prayers, as it were.  I know there are people who sneer at the very idea of “thoughts and prayers,” but I’m not one of them.  And I know there are plenty of people among my readers who don’t, either.

So I’m putting my friend’s story out there today, so people can add her to their prayer lists.  Her name’s Loretta, in case you’re interested, but you didn’t really need to have that information.  I’m sure the Man Upstairs already knows.