Clearly enough what I had once again committed myself to could not be put off any longer and since last evening presented itself as relatively mild with a beneficent breeze, luring me out to the street to at last begin the annual April door-to-door canvass for the Canadian Cancer Society, I'd finally procrastinated long enough. It's an annual ritual that I detest doing, but commit to anyway because someone has to do it, and there aren't hordes of people stepping forward.

It's been close to forty years since I first began doing this awkward and unlikeable bit of social pay-back, and long experience hasn't made it any easier. While it's true that most people are courteous and many do respond to the invitation to part with a few of their hard-earned dollars for a charitable cause that aids countless others within society and may even help them at some future time, those whose response is nothing but churlish tends to unevenly weigh the balance of my impression toward gloom.

I remain grateful to those of our neighbours who never fail to respond to the irritating knock on their door, to open it and find me there, on their doorstep, reminding them of the annual Cancer Society fund-raising campaign. I've known these people for over two decades and they never fail to embrace the request, even those who would decline, if others stood in my place. Whatever they donate, sparingly or generously, is appreciated; just the simple acknowledgement of our shared humanity that the act represents restores one's faith.

Two of the long chats that never fail to result from this springtime approach after not having seen people very often throughout the long, cold winter months stand out for their demonstrative need to continue the process of alerting people to the need to remember others.

At one of the houses up the street from our own live a couple, now on the cusp of retirement whose two children were infants when we moved to the street ourselves. The couple has bidden farewell to the dependence of their children; they are now awaiting their third grandchild. My friend, now in  her late 50s, suffered two bouts of breast cancer; as a nurse she knew what would be involved in battling it, and she persevered -- the incidents several years apart -- and courageously won her personal battle. She stopped nursing and became a pharmaceutical representative, constantly travelling, earning a hefty income which her husband's in comparison seemed only to supplement.

Now their house is up for sale. Yesterday they bought another house, still in the neighbourhood, and with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, similar to the one they've put on the market, but smaller, newer, more open and modern, they said. They also built a third story on a cottage they'd bought four years ago in Quebec, all to accommodate their growing little family. Theirs is a story of cancer's defeat.

At another house, where the occupants, a much younger couple who had moved in a decade ago now have two very young children, the story was different, but just as moving and telling of the need to be vigilant if at all possible, to give comfort to those afflicted. The young mother, a schoolteacher, had last week taken exam papers with her to a nearby cafe, to mark them in peace and quiet, without the nagging need to do domestic chores while her children were in daycare. She just happened to take a break to look at a local newspaper when she glanced at the obituaries and to her dismay, saw looking back at her the face of one of her early students. Dead, of lymphatic cancer at age 19.

On Sunday she attended his funeral, and surprised his mother into tears of gratefulness that she remembered. For herself it was a healing process to be among the mourners, many of whom were young people who had befriended her old student whom she remembered as a sweet-natured young boy enraptured by music, who played a cello beautifully.

She showed me a photograph of the young man whose cancer had been diagnosed a mere six months earlier, leading to his swift, precipitate death. His parents gave copies of the photographs as gifts to those who attended the funeral service.