To all the wonderful friends of Hard_To_Please Oct 24 '01    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Books Anna Dewdney - Llama, Llama Red Pajama From $10 Irene Hunt - The Lottery Rose: A Novel From $6 The Bottom Line See my profile page for more information and relevant links, including a moving tribute by 29th_Candidate. Thank you, everyone... I've decided to steal back into the Epinions community from the shadows of my leave of absence, albeit briefly, so that I may express my sincere gratitude toward all of those who supported the late Hard_To_Please (Mark). Through Epinion comments, emails, cards, care packages, phone calls, financial donations, and prayers, so many of you gave selflessly to help Mark through the unimaginable horror that is cancer. And although Mark passed on in the end, far sooner than any of us would have expected, I know that our efforts were not in vain; for there is no doubt in my mind that, if nothing else, we lifted his spirits during the entire ordeal -- and that is not something trivial. After telling us of his situation through an Epinion, the replies he wrote to comments left on that Epinion often spoke of free-flowing tears, and the inability to comprehend how so many people who didn't even know him in real life could care about him so much. It is more than obvious how much our support meant to him, and how much it helped him deal with everything. I wish I could say that I had known Mark in real life, or at least that I had known him longer on Epinions... yet I had only read a few of his writings before I found out about the diagnosis. The same is true for many of you... that you knew him not in real life. And, like him, I find it hard to comprehend how so many of you could rally together to support him like you did. "Hard_To_Please"... to many of our minds, he was just a name somewhere in the servers of Epinions. Yet to all of our hearts, he was a living, breathing, humorous, creative man, full of vigor and love of life. The fact that he was afflicted with such a terrible ailment, and that he now no longer dwells with us in body, changes none of these things. Nor does it change the fact that so many of you, without even knowing what this man looked like, gave of yourselves to better his situation. Any who ever feel that love has left this world need look no further than this little community, where the hearts of so many reached out to touch the life of a man they didn't even know. I don't have any words of wisdom to offer to those who now drown in their grief over the loss of Mark, nor do I believe that any such words will ever come to me. Yet one thing I do know -- I shall never forget the beauty of seeing so many people come together for the cause of aiding one single person. I wish you all only the best in life... and may God bless you.

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