My husband and co-teacher, Stan Lombardo, had aggressive mantle cell lymphoma that he’s in remission from. It’s really interesting how it happens. It happens because a certain gene on chromosome 11 decides to switch places with a certain gene on chromosome 13. You can’t see it. There’s no cause. It’s not because you didn’t eat enough kale or didn’t take enough vitamin C. It’s just randomly — boom! That’s the human condition. That’s what our lives are like.
And now we are really faced with this. We can become anxious and freaked out. Or we can look around and say: okay, what can I do with my life right now... So we have this situation. It’s just the human situation. Most of the time we try to avoid it. But it’s in everyone’s face. Now this is in our face in a way that it’s never been before. So we have to meet that. We have to not hole up in our bunker it a way that’s about us — like those rich people flying their airplanes out to islands — that’s not the way to do it.
Somehow we have to help each other.
