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On Death and Dying Young

I've shelved this topic for far too long. It was too difficult to acknowledge, too absurd to believe yet too real to ignore, and so I procrastinated. Last summer, in the span of 3 short months, two young women from our Ottawa breast cancer network were taken from us, along with two of my former colleagues - remarkable women, professionals and human beings, who were snatched away by terminal illnesses. We said goodbye to Sarah , 30. Simona , 36. Shelly , 48. Linda , 58. The finality of death was never more apparent than it was in the summer of 2018.  Enter 2019. Metastatic breast cancer rears its ugly head again, and takes two more young women from our ever-growing Ottawa network. Monica , 43. Katie , 35. And then came Wednesday, the day when our little sisterhood fell apart. We lost Danielle , and this shook us to the core. Dani was our no-nonsense fighter. Our champion. Our comedian. She was kind, bold and fearless. She was a mother of two young boys. She was 42.  I