Yesterday I got word that my good friend Maynard Blake had died. Maynard had a brain tumor removed several months ago and had had clear MRIs ever since — the cancer was not coming back. However, the recovery was just too much for him. In the end, it was a host of little infections culminating in pneumonia that took him down. For all the medical progress we’ve made, it is still all too common an occurrence that an operation is a complete success, except for losing the patient.
Maynard was just a great guy. A talented musician. A good husband and father. A good friend. He worked for the last few years counseling people with substance abuse problems, making a real difference in the lives of who knows how many people. He will be sorely missed.
As these things often happen, just shortly after learning about Maynard’s passing, I found this e-mail from reader Robert Vreugde:
Just read your essay at link
I attend what would probably be best described as a fundamentalist, bible believing church and generally share most of the beliefs of the people in the church. But I do not share the belief that death is a good thing, a time of “going home”, etc.
Exactly one year ago yesterday my father died after being wasted away in a hospital for six months. He was well educated with engineering degrees from Stanford and Cal Tech, hard working and very creative in a variety of fields. All that he was as man, all that he had learned and was still capable of doing – all that rotted away and was destroyed. As you say, death sucks.
Even the bible presents the idea that humans were not originally created to die. Supposedly our physical systems were designed to continue living on indefinitely.
Scientists may not be able to devise a means to halt aging BUT at the least, we ought to eventually fully understand what aging is.
I am glad that there are people like you who are raising the voice that it is time that we start treating death as a (potentially) curable disease and not just resigning ourselves to death as some sort of inevitable fate.
500 years ago humans dreamed of flying but had no idea of how. Only gods or angels were thought to have that ability.
Then perhaps 200 years ago people began to develop technologies that suggested that flight might be possible.
120 years ago people realized that flight was possible – all we had to do was refine the technology.
And then in Dec. 1903 powered flight was accomplished.
And now we fly all the time. We don’t think of ourselves as gods or angels or master race supermen.
We just fly.
Well said. Here’s looking forward to the day when we “just fly” — when we don’t just assume that we’ll be losing those we care about any day now, or that they’ll be losing us.
(For anyone who’s interested, the original version of Death Sucks can be found here.)