Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Bob... did you read anything I wrote? I had an battery of cardiac tests a few years back and at the conclusion of all of them, the docs said I was fine. So I guess we can rule out heart issues.
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Sebastian, this post is not a warning to you, because I think you have evaluated the risks of what your are doing, and that is fine. If you do not want to go to the doctor for whatever reason, I am certainly not going to preach to you about it. And I know that you understand that an iron ticker does not make you invincible. I had a colleague who I am pretty sure had an iron ticker. He was a triathlete, a sailboarder, a snowboarder, and many other things. He died last week after a battle with melanoma. He was 31. I know this is outable, but I don't care.
Because I am doing something that I did not think that I was going to do, which is to raise this issue here, let me first just say a little bit about him. I know there is a tendency to lionize the dead, but in the few years that I knew this guy, I found him to be one of the more charismatic people I have met. He loved life, loved sushi, loved all the things I mentioned above. He had so many different interests and so many friends. When I heard he was sick, it was like getting kicked in the stomach. So, for whatever tiny value this has on an anonymous internet lawyer chat board, let me just say that he was way way too young for what happened to him and that we all really miss him here.
I understand that the instinct of many will be to write to say something about how they are sorry about what happened, but PLEASE do not feel the need to do that because 1) I assume you are sorry - it is an incredibly sad thing, and 2) for once this is not actually about me. If you want to respond, tell me this instead: Have you ever thought about your funeral and what it will be like? Has anyone actually planned it? After this guy's funeral, I exchanged some e-mails with a co-worker about funerals in general. She decided that she wanted to be cremated, and now wants to start shopping antique stores to find the perfect urn. She gave it some thought after the funeral, and her vision of her own funeral involves a beautiful table in the middle of a big room with the perfect urn on it. Tom Waits will be played and, once everyone has assembled, waiters will enter the room with trays of martinis. I told her that this could come off as either 1) a hip, bohemian celebration of her life, or 2) a macabre David Lynch-ian nightmare. She said she is shooting for 2. I have never given too much thought about my own funeral, due in part to my strong denial of my own mortality. But, when I do occasionally think about it, in the funeral in my mind I have died while relatively young and popular. In fact, I am probably wildly more popular in my imagined funeral than I could ever hope to be. But I have never thought too much about the details. Because, at least for now, I do not really care.
