What's up with all the people dying?

What a week! Not for me, so much - although I did get some stuff done - but for so many other people. Both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died today.

Farrah Fawcett died of stage IV anal cancer and recently did a TV special about life with her stage IV cancer. I didn't see it; I don't even know if it was on here in Canada. By all accounts it was an honest and forthright account of what it means to live with a stage IV cancer.

Michael Jackson died of apparent heart failure while preparing for an upcoming tour in the UK. He was a ground-breaking artist and performer before he went nuts. I was reading that all of his kids' names include "Michael Jackson" in them. Creepy.

It's not even only that Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson are dead... so are Ed McMahon and Dr. Jerry Nielsen.

I expect you know who Ed McMahon is; he introduced Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show and he was a big entertainment guy. He supposedly did the Publishers Clearing House winner's visits. He died a couple of days ago.

Dr. Jerry Nielsen was the woman who found a lump in her breast while in Antarctica and no one could be brought in or out to do the biopsy so she did it herself. She found out that she did have breast cancer - a particularly aggressive and fast-growing type - and received chemo with the help of non-medical personnel while in Antarctica. Her cancer metastasized in 2005 and she died yesterday.

Dr. Nielsen's death is a bit more difficult for me to deal with because she died of breast cancer... I always have a hard time when I hear of someone dying of it because that'll almost certainly be my cause of death also. When I read or hear about someone else, it feels like something is walking around my grave, showing me where it will be.

The other deaths have hit me, too. One thing that's really brought home the fact that these people are dead is that their Wikipedia pages say that the article is about someone who has recently died. It's weird when people die that you knew when growing up. I guess I sort of expect people that formed part of my experiences to be around forever, you know? It's just more things circling, reminding me that it's going to happen to me, too.