(1) Watch complete seasons of "Wife Swap," "America's Top Chef," that stupid Bravo workout-gym reality show, and a full day's worth of Fox news in one sitting. You will most likely die of disgust.

(2) Cover your naked body with peanut butter and peanuts, and go lie down in the most squirrel-infested section of your local park. Sure, you'll die, but you'll die covered with happy squirrels.

(3) Go to the supermarket and buy the biggest, gooeiest, bluest, frothy-creamiest pie you can find. Then attend whatever Dick Cheney's latest appearance is. At the appropriate time, rush the stage and let him have it. Sure, you'll stand a good chance of being blown away by Secret Servicemen, but isn't it worth it? (Also works for Bush, Alberto Gonzalez, Antonin Scalia...)

Yeah, yeah, I know it's uncool to make light of a very dire and depressing situation... But what the heck, death by squirrel sounds fun to me.

I live with a chronic illness. Illness can bring anyone down - not just because of the illness itself, but because it can cause a chemical depression, and because it's hard to deal with anything when your energy is sapped.

The letter writer said she had "fairly advanced" cancer. That means she's been sick for years, maybe even a decade, without knowing it. Her "before the cancer diagnosis" feeling that she wants to die is colored by feeling like shit, and she may not even know it. Chances are good she's been feeling like shit for so long that she's forgotten what it feels like to be well.

Disliking a career and being lonely are fixable problems - when you're not depressed and you have the energy to deal with them. For that matter, even if the depression isn't caused by the cancer, it's often possible to treat depression. When you're physically well, you may find you're mentally a lot healthier.

These days cancer patients, especially breast cancer patients, are supposed to be perky and upbeat, taking part in marches with their arms around each other. Everyone wears a pink ribbon and a huge smile.

Oh man. Barbara Ehrenreich did a story for Harper's in 2001 about the "breast cancer pink ribbon cult," like you describe, and especially with her being a survivor it packs a wallop. No man would ever be shamed into such enforced cheerfulness about a potentially deadly and painful disease; tell a guy with prostate cancer to smile and put on a shiny blue ribbon and he'll probably either deck you or bite you on the ankle until toothmarks show, depending upon his physical stature. Link to the Ehrenreich story:

http://www.bcaction.org/Pages/LearnAboutUs/WelcomeToCancerland.html

Me, I've never had breast cancer, but I have had major depression. And the last thing I needed anyone to tell me then was, "But you have so much to live for! Cheer up!" I have to imagine that for LW this is cubed at the very least, with an advanced-stage cancer and facing what is likely to be grueling treatment. I think what the LW probably needs to hear most is that she is loved and valued and honored and would be very, deeply missed if she passed on -- not from strangers who don't know boo about her, but from people she actually knows. I dearly hope that at the very least, she is getting this from the people who are begging her to stay alive.

I am struck by the amount of love going out to LW in this forum. I'm struck by the number of people who just want to go to sleep -- all ages, all conditions -- funny, somehow I though it was only me. I know all about the Black Dog and the Book of the Dead and sometimes just feeling like you are waiting for it to end. Then something grabs you and you fly for a little while and that is pretty good -- even great. Sometimes just stretching and dancing as you walk out of work seeing a salmon sky and daffodils just starting to bud -- wow. Goofing with a cranky teen -- try to make them smile and realize how little they know and yikes -- is that a good thing or a bad thing? Still pretty funny when you are looking at 50. Then the Dog comes back and lots of days you do just put a foot in front of the other. I dunno -- lots of good thoughts to LW whatever she decides and lots of good thoughts to all of you have shared. I have to say that in my current frame of mind a discussion of depression and cancer wasn't likely to make me glad to be alive. But it did. Now I have to go let the cat out.

"Daffodils" (1804)

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

at least in part. We all will die. We hope to take our leave in a timely fashion, with dignity. This doesn't always happen. I am much more afraid of living too long--as my mother and my husband's father and stepmother are doing. If any of them could have seen themselves even ten years ago, they would have cried, Spare me! My mother's worst fear was "losing her marbles." In the space of four months they are mostly gone, a sudden descent (at 96) into dementia. She still knows there is something wrong with her. A blessing will come when she has deteriorated into not knowing, as my mother-in-law did about six years ago. Both of them, and my father-in-law (in poor health, demented, and paranoid) would be better off dead, released from suffering and confusion.

I have breast cancer; I had surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation in 2003. It wasn't easy, but present-day medical care made it bearable. I still have frequent visits with doctors and tests and treatments that remind me that I am always at risk. But so are we all.

I'm just objecting, I guess, to the cheerleaders who keep saying, Win, win! We all lose in the end. It is no sin to concede with dignity, to accept death and experience it as the last part of living.