IT'S NOT FAIR: Rest in Peace Bernie Gilpin

I am diminished, deflated, and depressed by the death of another of our OC band of CLL patients who meet most months to support each other. Bernie was a smart and kind and gentle person. So alive, sitting in my living room, telling his story. He will be missed. It's all too sad.

He loved to be out on his boat. May G-d now offer his wife and sons a safe harbor in their rough waters.

We are not that many in our small CLL support group, and we are getting fewer, for the very worst reason.

CLL stinks. No two ways about it.

I can talk all I want about the opportunities to reassess and to live a more meaningful life because of cancer, but I want to scream about QUANTITY and not just QUALITY of life when someone like Bernie who still had so much to give and so many reasons to live is so quickly gone.

I can't stay there in that crucible of pain, the old anguish of theodicy, the injustice of it all. I can't stay there or I will crack.

So I will move on to fighting for my life and those that I can help to add years to their life and life to their years by sharing what little that I have learned about how to best wage this mortal combat.

But first, I must let my heart beat a little more heavily for the loss I feel, and the anger and the fear and sadness.

I am still that same frightened 2 year old that I was 57 years ago crying that IT'S NOT FAIR.

IT'S NOT FAIR.

Unlike for his family, soon enough, it will be time for me to get over it. I will try to dispassionately decipher what lessons can be culled from this tragedy. And share them.

But not yet. Now I must mourn.