Ann's Blog

Usually I have a theme to write about. Not just a journal.  But I guess I'll get used to it. Living in the present more or less.  Mostly fiction is my thing.  Plays.  Even my stand up has a lot of fabrication in it because I never promised that it was the truth.  Just to make people laugh.

Yesterday, I went to my friend Ann Podolske's funeral.  We weren't particularly close but liked each other a lot.  Friends whom talked occasionally, happy to hang out and play catch up on the phone. I was always delighted to get to perform with her whenever I was given the opportunity.  She was an extremely talented stand up.  It made me so sad that the rest of the world never will never see how fucking good she was and even sadder that the world never gave her enough of a chance while she was alive.  Thank God she wrote a wonderful blog documenting the end of her life.  She left a voice for those who find it, mapping out a graceful death that she marched into bravely (after caring for her partner who also died from cancer months before Ann was diagnosed).   And she lived every second that she could as hard as she could while God gave her a breath and then faded out to the next place, saying good bye to her friends, preparing us for life without her and leaving a firm confirmation that it was all right.  She was ready for her next place.

She showed me the power of a blog.  Inspired me.  Her blog (www.apodolske.blogspot.com) enabled her to communicate her feelings, her experiences of her fight and her preparation for death to all of the people that could not physically be there with her.  It gave us the opportunity to communicate back with her via her comments that her friends at home read to her, giving her the knowledge that we were out there with her too. Earlier on, before she knew that she was losing the fight, it gave many other cancer patients a road map of what to expect.  She had a mercurial marvelous sense of humor that permeated her writing, like it did in person.   Most comics have that ingrained into us as a defense mechanism but, in Ann's case, it kind of flowed out of her pores.  It wasn't held up as a shield.  It was just part of who she was. It makes this blog of hers extraordinary.  The life of a person losing the fight against multiple myloma done palatable because she was so damned funny and positive and wise in her core.

So here's to you, Podolske. It's awfully hard to bitch about life when you are following a dying from cancer blog.