the best seller in love romance books

chapter one :
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed,
presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same
book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to
thinking about death.
Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list
depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of
cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost
everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see
my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and
totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I
should attend a weekly Support Group.
This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumordriven
unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.
The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the
basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross. We all sat in a circle
right in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of
Jesus would have been.
I noticed this because Patrick, the Support Group Leader and only person over
eighteen in the room, talked about the heart of Jesus...