All the wonderful people

I would like to take a moment and reflect on some of the awesome people whose worlds have collided with my own over this past year. Parents who have fought along side their children, yet who are still able to carve out time for the rest of us, children who hold up their parents that are afflicted by this disease, friends who'd give their lives for a cure, spouses who articulate the pain of their agonizing loss in one breath and then tell a joke in the next, random generosity from strangers, and that from close friends. Life is stripped down and raw and for the past year, I have interacted with people who are so far in the trenches of biological warfare that there's no hint of bullshit, no room for even the slightest waste of time. It's real here, now..and the people that I've been lucky enough to meet are as real as it gets.