Suddenly I began to wonder how to please so many people. do I take the magnesium citrate? What about the coffee enema? Do I do both? Do I do the abdo… - Gilda Radner

It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get. It's really crazy, isn't it? We get to live, but then we have to die. What we put into every moment is all we have. You can drug yourself to death or you can smoke yourself to death or eat yourself to death, or you can do everything right and be healthy and then be hit by a car. Life is so great, such a neat thing, and yet all during it we have to face death, which can make you nuts and depressed. It's such an act of optimism to get up every day and get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death. What spirit human beings have! It is a pretty cheesy deal - all the pleasures of life, and then death. I think some people just can't take the variables; they just can't take the deal - that is why they drink themselves silly or hide away or become afraid of everything. Sometimes I feel like I couldn't take the deal - it was just too much. Cancer brought life and death up close.

Gilda’s book ends with her acceptance of what I had called, in working with her, “delicious ambiguity,” the freedom that comes with simply not knowing the outcome of every happening or happenstance.

There is no real security except for whatever you build inside yourself.