Off topic, but truly worth sharing

I have a high-school friend who is living with a cancer that will ultimately, and perhaps soon, be terminal.

She has been keeping a blog in part because her voice has been compromised by the illness.

She is the daughter of a physicist, and she is a gifted writer.

Here’s the closing of my friend Judy’s most recent blog entry, her reflections on time.

Follow the link to read the whole thing.

… Time is precious: it’s really all we have.

Time–and the knowledge that after we die, life, and the world, go on. No one is indispensable. We each make our small contribution to the cycle of life. After we’re gone, we live in the memories and the actions of our friends and families. Our bodies return to earth. But like those dead and decaying fir trees in the California mountains, our essence remains, a whiff of immortality.

[Among the people Judy interviewed for Wisconsin Public Radio’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge” was me. My segment was about my then new book, To the Young Scientist: Reflections on Doing and Living Science.]