Life is given to each of us.  We each get one shot at this sucker, and we are never really told that it will be fair. ~Susan Niebur

Once upon a time, there was a blogger named Sam who was diagnosed with cancer. It was just as I came into blogging and I wasn’t sure what was up with all the “Team Whymommy” buttons on all these blogs.

Sam’s name was actually Susan, but she used Sam to keep her life a little more private.

She wrote this excellent piece about how the computer became all these windows to all these lives – which at the time, I was trapped under baby and breast pump most hours of the day and, to me, she found the words that were exactly how I felt.

I met Susan a few times, she was someone I would have liked to sit in the back of the smart kid classes with in high school, and I would have liked to have seen her smile from across a lunch table. She is the reason I realized that a stay at home mom needed to get herself some life insurance – by the time she realized she should have some, no one would insure her. That was one of the things I learned from her. The other is that sometimes life just isn’t fair.

It will be three years this week since her husband posted Goodbye. 868 people posted comments that day.

Susan was 38 years old. This month I turn 40 – It hurts that, among many things that Susan will never do, that turning 40 is one of them. And while I want to cringe from that age, I can’t, because some of us don’t have the chance to decide whether or not to pull the gray hair …

Susan, we miss you. We are better for you being here.