Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. This excerpt from Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” has been in my mind for a while now. Only today it became clear to me why.

Today I woke in pain. Nothing like the mornings after each of my knee replacements, nor the morning after my tonsils were removed, nor the morning after my appendix was taken out, nor the morning after my baby-making organs were surgically removed. But, where there was a little pain yesterday morning, after the complex tooth removal yesterday, this morning it was definitely sore!

This is an amazingly positive message from a young woman who died at the age of 36 from cancer. Her burning desire to make a positive difference was achieved with profound success by the example of her life and her passionate final message.

When I was 16 years old, my first goal to change the world for the better wrote itself into my brain – to help open and respectful conversations about different belief systems. At that time our new school headmistress was leading us to have these conversations weekly. I enjoyed them and wanted to make them happen much more often. I thought that all I had to do to make our world kinder and fairer, especially about beliefs, was to change the way that others talked about it…

Watching this video - "When I Die : Lessons from the Death Zone" - transported me back to my own experiences with death of my loved ones.