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My father passed from cancer in 2000; his brother died of cancer before that. My grandfather died of cancer.

When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.

While this has been a private part of my family's life, it is now clear a media story will soon emerge. My father tragically ended his life while battling terminal cancer in 1979.

In 2001, my father finally succumbed to the bone cancer that had tortured him for seven years. His last weeks were a terrible, black icing on the cake, the agony, the slow twisting, thinning and snapping of his skeleton. Everything fell apart.

Three days after my brother died, my father was in the hospital. He just did not want to live anymore. Before, he was fighting and loving life.

My father died of brain cancer in 1991. I do not know anyone whose life has not been touched by the loss of a loved one to cancer. I wrote my book 'Gracefully Gone' about my father's fight and my struggle growing up with an ill parent. I wrote it to help others know they are not alone in this all-too-often insurmountable war against cancer.

Cancer runs in our family. I lost my grandmother to it. There's a saying that you meet people and instantly know them. My grandmother and I had that. The first time my heart was broken was when my grandmother passed away. I was twenty-one.

When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, my middle school friends and myself really had no idea the impact of that diagnosis, but my family did.

I remember burying a girl fourteen years of age who had died with a ruptured appendix... I buried a good many people that I knew, some of whom I loved.