My friend S

Ever since I discovered that someone I know, a woman I used to work for eight years ago for just four months, had a resurgence of the cancer she had previously battled so succesfully, I have been reading her blog religiously. She is 41. She has a husband, a daughter and a son. The children are under the age of six. And despite a mastectomy, the cancer has returned to her body - her liver, her lungs and her brain.

She is a master blogger - posting every day, Monday through Friday - despite her illness, the various combinations of medication, oxygen tank sessions and chemotherapy, not to mention the journals, recordings and scrapbooks she is preparing for her children, so they will have communication from her after she is gone.

It is possibly one of the most difficult blogs to read due and there are more than a few posts that have brought me to easy tears. S is a humanist in the traditional sense. She believes in the power and the goodness of human beings, but despite being the daughter of Christian pastor, she most emphatically, does not believe in God. God, she says is nice to have, but He is a fairy tale that human beings have created because they are simply not strong enough to accept the truth that life is just that, and when it ends, it ends, and there is nothing more.

I read this blog every day, and even post comments occasionally. I do not make the mistake, as other blog readers have done, of trying to get her to see God. I know her too well. She will not let me get away with that. I worked with the woman as my editor for four straight months, and the work part of it nearly drove me to my wits end. She was and remains incessantly intense in the putting forth of her opinions, demanding explanations in the manner of a human bulldozer. But there would be moments outside of work, when we would talk of my K and C or when we would have lunch, when she would have unexpected softness that would surprise me and win me over, if only for that moment.

I also read her blog to make sure she is alive, to read her impressions and opinions which are less bulldozing on the internet page than if verbalised face to face. I pray for S every day, for her healing and for her peace and for the continually amazing courage of the members of her family. S is one of the most courageous people I know. The fact that she can be like this despite her disease all the while believing in nothing eles but herself is amazing. It is true that death will come to all of us. But S lives with its grim reality every day, like bread and butter at breakfast. More than anyone else, she lives with its certainty and manages with grace and courage to keep it at bay with every passing day.

Yesterday, I read that she will no longer blog five days a week but reduce it to three. She says she can no longer get to it these days...and she apologises to her scores of readers. "You have all the time in the world, but I do not."