October, with its pink ribbons, T-shirts and yogurt lids, has passed, and I couldn’t be happier.

Thanks for those who dutifully bought pink. It did a lot of good. But to me, all that pink is a sore reminder of my mom’s death seven years ago, caused by a cancer seldom remembered with ribbons, walks or products hawked in women’s magazines.

Like about 160,000 others each year, my mother — who baked cakes, led Girl Scout troops and was an eager learner who returned to school while raising four children — died of lung cancer.