A Little Bit Sad

So if you want something not depressing, stop reading.
On Sunday, one of my former co-workers passed away. I've known him for five and a half years, he's been battling cancer for four and a half years, yes, almost the entire time that I'd known him, Bruce has had cancer. Bruce was an incredibly upbeat and optimistic person. Almost always happy, smiling. You'd have no clue that he was battling a stage four cancer and making regular visits to the Mayo Clinic. Up until mid-June 2008, he was still working full time, how, I have no clue. The treatment he was going through was intense and he had no feeling in his feet as a result.  He realized that he just couldn't keep up with the day to day demands that a job like mine has, I put in around 50 hours a week, easily and there's all the driving. So, he went onto long term disability.
A few weeks ago, the Mayo Clinic told him that there wasn't anything more that they could do, gave him 2 -3 weeks to live and sent him home. I've been mentally preparing myself since then. I knew it was coming. Quite honestly, I've been trying to prepare myself for a long time. I'd always hoped it would go into remission, that there would be a miracle, but the cancer kept spreading. So I think Sunday, I went a bit numb. Yesterday when I talked to my friend, M, who'd known Bruce since the days when they worked at Farm Bureau, I stayed strong, she was a wreck, rightfully so. She'd known him for 25 years.
And tonight when I was heading out for a dinner meeting and running down a list of to do's - buying a sympathy card was on the list and I lost it. And just bawled for about 10 minutes. Tomorrow (Wednesday), I travel to Carroll for the funeral. We'll see how that goes, I'm not big on crying in public, but I'm generally a mess at funerals.  Here's his obit: http://www.carrollspaper.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=3&ArticleID=9010&TM=21.238