It comes with a lifetime guarantee!

I was listening to the radio as I drove to meet friends for dinner last night. There was an ad that came on for mortuary stones - with a life time guarantee! But who's life? Considering you buy them for when you die? I thought this was a well 'doh' marketing moment. But my husband did point out that they wouldn't get a lot of complaints that way if all their customers were dead. So maybe its smart marketing after all.

I had dinner with some friends who we all went through cancer treatment about the same time. We did talk about the importance of lifetime guarantees, life insurance, saving for retirement, and all that long term stuff that gets skewed with cancer. Why am I saving for money to live on in forty years if my chances are being here in 40 years are somewhat less than most others? But then we all decided that Oprah gave the best advice a few years ago: save for retirement and die broke. We decided that living the best life possible is the best way to do it. Someone's advice as 'live every day like it was Christmas'. I think there are a bunch of country music songs on the topic "Live Like You Were Dying", etc. Anyway, enough morbid talk.

Then I walked out of the restaurant and in the parking lot were four men talking. I realized I worked with three of them for several years until a layoff in 2002 and hadn't seen any of them since. I had head through mutual friends on how some of them were doing so I know two are now married, who works for whom, etc. But did I want to rush over and say hello? Not really. Too much time had passed. Too much water under the bridge. And did I really want to go through how am I doing, blah, blah, blah? The last former co-worker I had told about my health issues, I have not heard from since. I am not prepared for others to say 'oh, that's too bad, we'll do lunch sometime' and drop off the planet. So I turned with my friends and we walked to our cars and drove off.

My question for myself is if there hadn't been cancer in my life in the intervening years, would I have walked over and said hello? I am not sure. Cancer changes everything.