If there's one thing that I've learned about cancer, it's this: Life is too fragile to worry about the things we usually spend all our energy on, like deadlines, traffic, working late, making money and so on. Cancer isn't always a death sentence but it should always be a wake-up call. Whether it happens to you or someone close to you, it should always remind you of what's really important.

When my dad passed away, I went through the anger stage of grief being angry at him because although he knew he was dying and I didn't, he never once told me he loved me, even though we had about a dozen conversations during that time. I took grief counseling shortly after and my counselor said something simple but profound and definitely thought-provoking: sometimes the way we say I love you isn't through words. That day, I thought about all the ways he told me he loved me. There were some obvious ways and then some subtle ones. Like, I remember when I was in high school, I told him I liked a certain flavour of gum and from that day on, he bought that kind of gum every time he went grocery shopping, even though a teenager's tastes change as often as their hair colour. My dad never chewed gum -- it always ended up on my dresser, sitting on top of my mail. Thinking about things like that made me smile wider than I'd smiled in a long time, and I felt divinely comforted. The anger was gone.

A few months later, I was frantically rummaging through my dad's desk in search of a pen. Tucked in the back, I found a value pack of gum. I'm not particularly into superstition and such but to me, it was a sign from him, a reminder not to get too caught up in everything and to take a a few moments to be blown away by the sheer power someone's love can have over us.

So for today, and every day, I challenge you to say I love you -- whether with words or not -- and remind someone of what's important in life: family, friends, and of course, love.

How do you say I love you?