The Bad and The Good

So first the Bad.
Yesterday I found out that a friend of mine from high school passed away. She was my first roommate, a friend, a coworker and then we lost touch. Recently, through Facebook we connected again and got chatting a bit. We even met for supper while I was in Calgary for radiation in last September.
It was after radiation was finished and I was home that Lauryl told me that she had cancer again. She had Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma twice in her early twenties and the radiation treatments had caused a secondary cancer: lung cancer with a tumor around her aorta. We talked a lot about what the doctors had found and what their recommended courses of action might be. I hope what little support I could give was helpful for her. She recently had radiation to settle things down I guess, because since we talked about it in the fall, sometime since after the new year it had spread to her bones. She went on a trip to Disneyland in March with her family and then started chemo about a week ago (the 28th I believe). I know she was in a lot of pain but was hoping that she would have more time. I hadn't heard from her for a while so on 1st April I sent her a message on Facebook and figured I give her a week to resopond and then call her on the phone. She died on the 2nd of April. A mutual friend of ours, Nat, called me yesterday right after talking to Lauryl's mom to let me know she had passed away. Nat is my longest friend, she is the only highschool friend I've had consistent contact with since highschool ended. And Nat and Lauryl were very close back then, they attended the same highschool together, where I went to a different one.
I can't believe she died so quickly, and despite the fact that life had moved us apart over time I am still going to miss her and I am deeply saddened by her passing. I have been very easy to cry since I got the news, and anxious today, this has scared me since I am still fighting my cancer. It scares me that I might go that fast. I have things to do, like clean/clear my house, cuz I don't want to leave all that work for my family to take care of (for one thing). But I have so many other things I want to do like travel and read and learn and dance and...LIVE.
May you have peace and be pain free Lauryl, we will all miss you.

So now a little bit of Good.
I went to a ballet tonight, The Phantom of the Opera by the Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada, with my best friend Shonna. There was a wine tasting with masquerade before the show, it was great. There were a few people dressed up on stilts and masks, they were probably 11 ft tall with these tiny, tiny little feet. But they walked around and swooped people with their cloaks, they would stand still propped against a wall or pillar and then move, so at first you might think they were statues but there were people under the costuming and masks. I got swooped a few times, it was fun :D

I tried out 4 wines, the wine tasting was that you got an ounce of a wine and then you could go for a different one. You bought food and wine tickets and got to have a plate of hors d'oeuvres and an empty wine glass to take to the wine tables for a taste of 4 wines at each table. The best one I had was a Spanish wine, and it was the most expensive one lol but thats ok. The other tables were from France, Germany and Italy. I had all reds and I liked the German wine the second best. The food was great, very good nibblies.

Now for the show. The show was great, very interesting, wonderful concept and the music was very appropriate. The flow of the story was done very nicely and the set work was minimal but full of impact. The use of the 3-sided panels that had different faces on each side were great, and so was the final curtain backdrop and the use of projected images several times.

So for a great evening I must say a big Thank You to Shonna as it was her treat to go tonight. It was a great diversion from the bad news and was a great time for another new experience!