A brave lady gone

Lots of shocking stuff in the news lately; the closeup video of the poor Iranian woman who was shot, and now this, which made me gasp out loud. Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, the woman who doctored her own breast cancer while on assignment in the South Pole, finally succumbed to the disease.

It wasn't even the drama of that story that got me in reading what the Times quoted her as saying:

"More and more as I am here and see what life really is, I understand that it is not when or how you die but how and if you truly were ever alive,'' she wrote in an e-mail to her parents in June, 1999 from the South Pole.

And this:

''I would rather not have it. But the cancer is part of me. It's given my life color and texture. Everyone has to get something. Some people are ugly, some people are stupid. I get cancer,'" she said at a lecture in Denver.

I was talking to a friend of mine about how well my dad was coping with my mom's illness (like a champion), and she said she thought we were all put here to deal with our own stuff...along the lines of we all have our load to bear.  I said I thought we were put here just because, but that it is how we deal with the crap that comes down that defines our character, our life.

~BurbMom

Photo: National Science Foundation

Comments

[CalGal]

Bravo. I was also moved by Roger Cohen's piece, "Iran's Second Sex," in Sat. New York Times. Add to that the passing of Farrah Fawcette, my generation's image of the clean, sexy American girl. Or maybe it was the California girl. Still, she smiled instead of growled. She worked at her craft instead of sitting passive and waiting for life to happen to her. She fought and shared her fight with us.

I'm proud of women. Proud to be a woman. And have thought since Bosnia that we would help arm the women. I trust their instinct to wait to fight, but will rush hell with a bucket of water when repressed and/or pushed too far. I think the Afgan women, if armed, would put an end to the monsters throwing acid in their girls' faces for going to school.

Thank you for reminding us. CalGal