My beautiful funny friend Shannon King, in whose honor Monstro and I Relayed-for-Life the other week, died on Saturday.

I am heartbroken.

Shannon and her husband Phil advised the junior-high youth group at our Chico church the same year I advised the high-school group. We coordinated a junior/senior high VBS class and put on a great skit at the end of it, about the worshiping of a golden idol. One of our seventh graders dolled herself up in a shimmering toga. I fell at her feet. Shannon pulled me away.

"Now, we don't worship golden idols," Shannon admonished me.

"But it's so shiiiiny!" I whined.

"Come on, now. You know the better way," she said.

We also took the high-school group to see the movie "Saved." She and I howled all the way through it.

"When that character said she'd rather have cancer than be pregnant, I just wanted to give her a hug and take her home," Shannon said as we left the theater.

Her service will probably be on Thursday, but I can't go because I'm pregnant and stuck in stupid Massachusetts.

Stupid Massachusetts. Stupid cancer. Stupid God.