Remembering Linda Catanzaro Boberg — Another Life, Another Friend Stolen by MBC

When you don’t get responses to emails you’ve sent a friend who’s living with metastatic breast cancer, you start to worry and wonder if she’s doing alright.

A couple months ago, that happened. Immediately, I suspected something was wrong. This is the way it is with MBC. A person can seem to be doing okay. Then one day, her health takes a turn for the worse. Things can, and often do, go downhill fast. If it’s an online friend, often you never hear from her again. This scenario is not uncommon in MBC Land.

My friend Linda Catanzaro Boberg died from MBC on March 19, 2023. She’d been living with MBC for four years.

I remember the night I got a message from her telling me she was metastatic. She was scared, worried, and yes, angry.

Pretty quickly, she got on with dealing with the cancer-crap cards she’d been dealt and kept busy living her life — as well as MBC allows you to do that anyway.

For Linda, part of that was keeping up with her rigorous writing schedule. As well as her reading one. Doing either, much less both, is not easy post-cancer diagnosis, much less post-MBC diagnosis.

That’s the first connection Linda and I had — writing. Beside, the damn cancer, of course.

Even though Linda and I never met in person, we were friends. We hit it off primarily because of that writing connection. But we had more than that in common.

We were the same age. We both have husbands named Dave and three adult kids — each of us having one daughter and two sons. Like me, Linda was a former teacher. Her family meant everything to her. She loved her grandchildren dearly. She enjoyed gardening, reading blogs, and encouraging others. Like me, Linda preferred to speak truth regarding her cancer experience rather than sugarcoat it. We agreed that making plenty of room for cancer anger was good for a person, maybe even necessary, as was reading/writing a good rant now and then.

We were also quite different. Unlike me, Linda was an extrovert and thrived on face-to-face interaction with others. Linda belonged in the “big world”. When you have MBC, your world shrinks. It just does. On top of that, throw in the pandemic — more shrinking. A shrinking world was hard for Linda.

Linda also got a lot more books written than me. (Not that anyone’s counting, of course.) Somehow, she managed to get a half-dozen books published during her last few years. And, she had others in the works. Me — I’m finally getting my third book out next week. Her genre was romance. Mine is, well, I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it’s not that.

It boggles my mind to think of all the effort and determination all that writing and publishing took. I’m pretty sure she wondered what was taking me so long to get my little book finished. At one point, she told me, “Just do the book!”

I needed that nudge.

Some folks wonder if online friendships are, in fact, real friendships. I would like to state unequivocally right here, right now, that they are real indeed.

Some folks also wonder why early-stage Breast Cancer Havers like me keep hanging out in Breast Cancer Advocacy World.

Why don’t we just step away and forget about cancer? (If only…)

Why knowingly put ourselves through more anguish and heartache that we know is coming?

After all, how many times can our hearts break?

Maybe not sticking around in Advocacy World would be easier. But easier isn’t necessarily the path we choose, or should choose.

I love how friend and fellow advocate Jennifer put it in a recent blog post titled, It’s Not All Sunshine and Roses in Breast Cancerland, about Flori, yet another beautiful soul recently stolen by this wretched disease:

I have a new purpose and a deep joy in encouraging, serving, and participating in this amazing community. We work together, each of us adding our own voice to the symphony of advocacy.

Jennifer Douglas

I love framing our advocacy in Breast Cancer Land as a symphony.

Each of us has a unique experience, a unique voice, a unique role. Every voice matters. No one’s is bigger or more important. No one’s role is less than.

Just as the music of every instrument or voice in a symphony or chorus is beautiful and necessary in order to culminate in a well-rehearsed, beautiful-sounding concert, the efforts of each individual’s voice when combined with all the others, results in the greatest advocacy impact, and that, too, is a beautiful thing.

Now, another voice in our symphony has been silenced. And so, we take time for the sadness. We take time to mourn. We take time to regroup.

And then, we pick ourselves up; we carry on.

As we do, we think about all the voices — those among us — and those that no longer are. For me, this means always circling back to my mother.

I will always remember your voice, Linda; I will always remember you.

Thank you for inspiring me to be a better writer, a better person. Thank you for being my friend.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the pieces Linda wrote for Nancy’s Point. I’ve linked to them below. The last one on the list is a post that Linda and her daughter Meg co-wrote.

The Daily Struggle with Fear by Linda Catanzaro Boberg – A #MetsMonday Featured Post 

“Death Wishes” by Linda Catanzaro Boberg – A #MetsMonday Featured Post

Port Rant — A #MetsMonday Featured Post by Linda Catanzaro Boberg

Navigating Preparatory & Anticipatory Grief By Linda Catanzaro Boberg and Meg Boberg

Find and explore Linda’s books here.

Listen to a eulogy from Meg, Linda’s daughter, below.

Do you think online friendships are real?

How do you cope when someone you “only knew” online dies?

I’ll always be grateful to Linda for nudging me to finish writing and publishing EMERGING.

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