Lisa Lynch, author, editor, blogger and cancer bitch, died a couple of days ago.
I never knew her. Never had a conversation and a giggle with her, or sent her an e-mail, or commented on her website, or had any contact at all. All I did was lurk in her blog, and read her posts avidly. Even then I was a Johnny-come-lately: I only started reading Alright Tit last spring, when for some unaccountable reason I went through a period of reading everything cancer-related I could find.
I love the blog. I love her vibrant, straight talking, tell-it-like-it-is style, and her extraordinary ability to relay the humour and absurdity of her situation even in the midst of utter horror. She describes situations so vividly that you're there, right there with her, through all the consultations and treatments, operations, chemo, pain, anxiety and hair loss - which she deals with in typically robust style by becoming a "wig-slag". You're with her through the good times with her much loved friends and family: shopping trips, birthday parties, holidays and Christmases and the birth of her nephew. And through the remission and then the re-occurence. With her all the way into the hospice.
Her blog wasn't about cancer: it was about life, with cancer.
I never knew her. But I'll miss her.
Just want to say that I am another 'lurker' (never commented on Lisa's blog either - by the way, her book 'The C Word' is excellently too, unsurprisingly) who has recently discovered your blog. So I'm breaking the habit by wishing you all the very best (and personally I think your writing equals hers; how you both write/wrote so well under such stress is amazing to me). Hope the results were okay.
ReplyDeleteHi Harriet,
DeleteThank you! I'm hugely flattered to even be mentioned in the same breath as Lisa, but have to say her skill with words is - no, was - unique.
The results were fine. I haven't written a blog for an age, which is remiss of me, but I just haven't had the energy. A lot of my writing has been fuelled by fear or anger, and it's a good thing for me that I'm not in those states at the moment: but bad for the blog!
Best wishes,
Carol