It’s not something I like to think about, but lupus is a very serious and potentially fatal illness. I was reading an article on the Associated Press this morning about how the woman who was the the inspiration for the classic Beatles song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, died after a long battle with lupus. (I would link the article, but the AP has some pretty strict usage guidelines for their articles. I don’t really feel like paying for a link. You can search for it on your own.) Lucy Vodden had been a childhood friend of John Lennon’s son, Julian, who had come home from school one day with a drawing of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” I had always thought it stood for LSD. I think I like the song a bit better now.

What I don’t like is thinking about losing my wife to lupus. Mrs. Vodden spent the last five years of her life in a hospital in England. She was only 46. I know my wife doesn’t like to think about dying. We are both in a bit of denial about her disease. We keep assuming that at some point she will just get better, or some new medicine will work wonders. I don’t really know that it’s such a bad thing to think that. What’s the alternative? Does thinking about death make anything better? I don’t think so. Yes, we need to take lupus seriously, but life can’t just be about avoiding death. Everyone will eventually lose that battle.

I just don’t want her to lose that battle anytime soon.