I cried last night. I'd managed to get the link to the future website he sent me working and I read his blogs.
I didn't know his mother had passed away too. He's a far stronger man than I am. He's had to deal with two losses in such a short amount of time. My life seems trivial in comparison.
I cried. And that sent me on a journey that I am on this very morning.
I still have my parents. My father turns 59 in a month or so and my mother will be 53. Their health is...well...it could be better. I wouldn't say it is life threatening. But we've never been the healthiest of living people that I know.
His father died of the disease that I know find myself in the proto-stages of. Last year when I was diagnosed with my prostate problems...his father was all I could think about. I remember what he went through when his dad was struggling.
I cried then. As I cry now.
I am not afraid of death. My search for new meaning in my life has made me comfortable with the thought. The fact that I attempted to take my own life years ago has perhaps given me a new sensibility on the matter.
But I can still cry. Loss is loss. Though I don't feel the loss as a permanent thing. For as long as those we begat or know or share are blood remember us...we live on for perhaps 60-80 years longer.
And then...others take our place. As it is meant to be. There is no sorrow in this. There is no pain. It is just the way it is. And there is no reason to fear it.
Immortality is having children. The only way. Not through hoping for resurrection from some man dead on a cross. Not through spaceships hiding behind comets waiting to take the nike-emblazoned throngs into space.
Immortality is all about living. It is about a shared moment for perhaps 60-70 years of life. One comes into life from two prior lives. One will share with another and create a new life who will in turn follow the same course. And through all those individuals is the thread of immortality. There really is no death. There is just one moment that turns into another moment.
Change is the only constant.
And not fearing change should be the goal of the world.