Soap opera actress Darlene Conley, best known for playing Sally Spectra for the past 20 years on The Bold and the Beautiful, lost her battle with cancer over the weekend. She was 72.

Conley, who was diagnosed with stomach cancer just three months ago, also played characters on Days of our Lives and General Hospital -- and many knew her as black market baby broker Rose DeVille onThe Young and the Restless.

Before embarking on a daytime career, Conley made appearances in movies The Birds and Valley of the Dolls and on television shows such as Murder, She Wrote, Cagney & Lacey, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

According to the National Cancer Institute, one out of two men and one out of three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and three out of four American families will have at least one family member diagnosed with cancer. Those statistics are so overwhelming in scope that it takes a minute before it sinks in just how epidemic cancer is and how many lives it touches. And even after the reality of the numbers has become a reality in my mind, I am still always surprised when I find out someone has been diagnosed with cancer, or someone they are related to has died of cancer.

I was happily and distractedly researching information for something entirely unrelated to cancer -- a recently released animated movie based on a favorite comic strip Over The Hedge -- when in an interview with Bruce Willis, who is the voice of RJ the raccoon in the movie, shared his philosophy about life and living. Willis lost his younger brother to pancreatic cancer five years ago. In the interview Willis remarks: