Unstoppable Death

My friend Robert is dead.

He was younger than me. It was cancer.

As I thought of Robert today, my mind drifted to old movie monsters. They were slow moving -- almost laughably so. But even so, they were scary in their time. They were slow, but they didn’t sleep. They never rested.

Like death itself. When we're young, death is easy to outrun, if we’re even aware of it lurking somewhere out there. It can’t catch up to us when we're young. It can’t catch us unless we fall. It can’t catch us unless we succumb to some unexpected catastrophe that takes away our power to run away from it.

Like Robert -- Robert, on his death bed, unable to arise, unable to run away. In his wasted weakness, he couldn't fend off death, couldn't outrun it.  The slow-moving monster got past his doctors, got past his family, got past his guardian angels, and it took him.

It made him dead like itself.

Based on our knowledge of the arc of life, we know that one day, like Robert, we also will be in a state of mortal helplessness. We slow down. We tire. We know we need sleep. We begin to know the danger of that slow-moving monster that doesn’t sleep – that monster with it’s fatal persistence.

Science places barriers between us and the monster. So does wealth, health, and nutrition. But that dogged monster overcomes all barriers sooner or later.

And it can’t be killed. Because how do you kill death?

It starts its unstoppable journey to find us as soon as we possess life. It might start from far away, or from nearby. It might have many miles to travel before it finds us, or few. But whether many miles or few, the meeting must come.

It must come, and we know it must come, but we usually don't think about it.  Until we do.  Until it takes a friend or a relative.  Then we might resolve to eat healthier, exercise more, or visit the doctor for a checkup. We do these things hoping to put more miles between us and our tireless pursuer.

The last time I saw Robert, we were in a grocery store. It wasn’t that long ago, but it was before he knew he was sick. I was at the end of the checkout line, and he came from behind and bumped me, hard. In fun. I turned to see who bumped me. When I saw it was him, I smiled, put my arm around his shoulders, and said, "You don’t know how close you came to going unconscious."

Robert leaves a son and a daughter entering adulthood, and a wife.