And now my fiance is too. If you're not familiar, I suggest you get acquainted. He's dead now, but you can read his archived blog at http://www.penmachine.com/. Last night in the apple store, I was playing around with the ipad2 and it was set on youtube so I thought, "Why not?" I searched him. I watched his videos. I watched him sing and play guitar. And I cried. Right there in the store. Then I pulled up the website to show Rumil and as his eyes got teary reading Derek's last post I had to hold myself together so my tears didn't turn into another sob fest.
"Does it remind you of your mom?" He asked. "Do you think it's why it makes you sad?" I think it's just the untimeliness of death. Never that it's good timing but at least if someone lives over 80 you can say, "well, they lived a good, long life." Well not Derek K. Miller, and not my mother.
In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, he was a blogger like before blogs were blogs. This guy has been blogging since 2000, the year I graduated high school, about all things techy and the reason why I now only use one space after periods. I had read about it but he solidified the fact.
In 2007 he was diagnosed with cancer and while he never turned his techy blog into a cancer blog, he does chronicle his experience of living through treatments and eventually dying. So over the past week or so I have read his blog from the diagnosis to the death and let me tell you, it sucks. He has two daughters, a wife, a dog. He doesn't believe in God, or spirits or after life or Heaven or hell. He compares death to a shriveled up flower, there's nothing left.
Towards the end of his life people were sending him diet cherry coke, which apparently you can't get in Canada, and that cheese whiz stuff. Earlier on in the blog he talks about how much he loves McDonald's.
Although not over weight he always had a big appetite. He was diagnosed with Diabetes and has been insulin resistant since the early 90's when he was in college. He always brought up that if they hadn't figured out how to make synthetic insulin he wouldn't have lived past '91, or met his wife, or had his children. But what astounds me is that in a blog entitled "Bring me Diet Cherry Coke and Easy Cheese he says, "And if you say that those are horrible food-like substances that will give me cancer, I will just laugh and laugh." http://www.penmachine.com/2011/04/diet-cherry-coke-easy-cheese
I mean, if you're already on your way out, eat whatever you want, I guess, but I can't help of thinking of the fact that while he understood he was poisoning himself with chemo and radiation, he never understood that had been poisoning his body with food and drink for far longer. It pains me to even say that.
Watching my mom die, reading about him dying, knowing that they both loved diet coke...I don't know. I just think it's weird, you know, the coincidence. Watching my future mother in law drink it now while my future father in law wipes chunks of butter over a piece of lavash after he's already eaten 6 tortillas, mashed potatoes and mac n cheese...I'm at a loss.
I tried to get one of my clients who had chronic headaches for years and years and years off diet coke. She resisted. I don't know what happened but one day she woke up and decided she was over the pop. Hasn't had a headache since. Oh, I remember, she read a website about aspartame poisoning and decided she was poisoned. Moral of the story: she hasn't had a diet coke or a headache since and this was someone that was practically crippled several days out of the month by migraines.
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