“Well, at last, I think I feel happy when I wake up every morning.” She answered after thinking for a while.

The first person I interviewed was Billie Bandermann, a music instructor at De Anza College. I admire her very much personally for a long while and in reality we are as close as friends. I was surveying her when she was driving me to school.

I laughed. She is so cute. I love her optimistic tone. I was asking her the first question from the interview form: ‘In looking back over your life, what were some of the moments of greatest happiness? Give three examples.’ Her first two examples were when she had her first child, and passed the five years mark for cancer last year. Cancer?! My heart dropped when I heard that. She never mentioned that to me before!

Fortunately I chose to interview her for my speech class.

My mother is still healthy, but my friends’ don’t. I have a friend whose mum died of cancer last year. It was her mum’s fifth year since treatment and if she could pass that year, it indicated that the treatment was successful and the cancer is “cured”. But at the first half of that critical year, the doctor found cancer cells around the liver, and after another year, she passed away. My friend cried, but recovered, at least, in front of me.

I am so glad this is not Billie, though I would be glad if this is nobody too. I am really grateful to God, or, whosoever determines our so-called fate. I had always believed that good person could have a happy ending. At this instant, I believe that to be a good person is already something to be happy of. What is an end? Who knows when will anything ends? It is an uncertainty whether any ending ever exists after all. She is a kind lady, and so she lives.

For the eleventh question -what has life taught you – she said something that made me anxious: the most important thing in world is nothing but human relationships. This is what I thought, but denied. I always contradict myself. But as someone I respect and trust, her words made me worried and felt weighty. Should I take things less or more serious? Or actually, I am fine as I am now?

So we continued our “survey”. Out of fifteen questions in total, she chose to skip the second and third question, which asked for her greatest sorrow and disappointments in her past life. For her greatest fears now, this is what she told me:

“To answer this question.”

And, that’s why I like her so much.