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Today I got the news that a dear friend of the family died of brain cancer. He was only 51 and leaves behind his wife and two young children. He had had surgery twice, but the cancer returned. Apparently he felt unwell and died in fifteen minutes. He and his family had had the chance to be together, to tell each other how much they loved each other, to take a final trip together, and when he went he wasn't alone. But there's a big difference between my mother's death of brain cancer at the age of 88 and this dear man's interrupted journey with his family. My daughter has an uncle who is also dying, slowly, of a kind of brain cancer. He responded well to radiation and chemo for a fairly long time, as these things go, but it came back and now he is paralyzed and we are all waiting for his transition. His adult children are taking turns spending time with their mother and with him. My daughter also lost her grandfather on her father's side within a few months of her grandmother. It has been a relentless season of loss.