Friend’s sudden death reminds me that love is all we have at the end

By David McElroy · May 14, 2013

On March 4, I got an email from Chris Kahn. We had only been friends on Facebook for about a year and a half, but I’d come to like and respect him. He remembered that I’d had a bout with cancer last year, so he had some questions.

“I have not gotten the results from the biopsy yet, but my gastroenterologist and oncologist are fairly certain the tumor in my esophagus is cancerous,” Chris wrote. He said the doctor was making plans for chemo, radiation and surgery. “I am not really happy with the idea, but there may be no other option. If you have any thoughts you’d like to share, I’d appreciate it.”

Just 41 days later, Chris was dead.

After his initial message about the surgery, I posted the details of his situation and asked others for treatment options. Nothing interesting and viable turned up.

I didn’t keep up with the specifics of how he was doing, but I knew he was getting treatment. On March 12 — just eight days after his initial message to me — he posted on Facebook about the way his situation looked.

“It has started to spread,” he wrote. “The reality kind of sunk in today. This may kill me.”

I could tell from the pictures and short comments he made over the coming weeks that he was having surgery. On April 12, I sent him another email to ask how the recovery was coming along.

“David, thank you for your continued interest,” he wrote. “My response may seem a bit disjointed and rambling as my brother-in-law is hovering over me with my prescriptions. For the most part I am on hold until we can discover who wants this info. Generally speaking, healthy.”

I saw that as very positive news. He was recovering, surrounded by family. And his health was, “Generally speaking, healthy.”

I felt he was someone else who had beaten cancer and that he was going to be fine. I didn’t hear from him after that. I got busy with life and didn’t check on him again until this past weekend. When I went to his Facebook page to send him a note, I found a message from his sister and brother in law:

To all the friends of Chris Kahn,
He passed away Sunday evening [March 14].
Please post your messages on his Facebook wall.
He died in our home in hospice care.

I know that people die every day. That’s just the way the world works. But it’s not every day that someone I know dies, so it leaves me with the same sorts of melancholy feelings that such deaths bring to so many of us. As much as I’d like to pretend that the feelings we experience are grief for the loss of a friend or loved on, I think the feelings tend to be about ourselves.

Other people’s deaths remind us that we’re mortal. They remind us that we’re going to die, too.

Chris Kahn was an intelligent and thoughtful man. He was a principled libertarian who frequently had insightful comments about subjects related to politics and society. In the short time I knew him, I came to see him as someone interesting enough that I’d like to have known him better. (When Chris posted this picture in January, friends joked that he was going for the record of “longest beard for someone who actually has a job.”)

At this point, though, his politics and his intelligence don’t matter. He’s just another mortal man who’s “gone beyond the gate we must all pass some day,” in the words of the great songwriter Terry Scott Taylor (in “One More Time“).

From the day a doctor told him he thought it was cancer until the day he died, Chris didn’t quite have six weeks. It reminds me of how fortunate I was last year when a doctor told me that I had breast cancer and lived to tell about it. It reminds me of the cliche that none of us know how much time we have left on earth.

More than anything, though, it reminds me that we’re here to love and be loved. Some people mistake that for just the physical things they do for people and that they allow people to do for them. Those things are important, but the real point is the feeling of loving connection and understanding that exists between two hearts — at least every now and then.

Don’t waste the time you have in this world. Don’t accept less than a real loving connection. Don’t let any kind of pragmatism or “what others would think” get in the way of having what you need. When you lie in a bed dying one day, you’re not going to worry about what people thought of you or whether people thought you made the right decisions. You’re just going to want to know you’re loved and understood.

I’m going to miss my friend, Chris. And I thank him for forcing me to think — one more time — about what I really want and what’s truly important in this life.

Goodbye, Chris.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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