Posted on 05/05/2011 5:34:23 AM PDT by Daffynition
May 3, 2011. This is a copy of Derek Miller's last post, http://www.penmachine.com/2011/05/the-last-post.
His server is overloaded, despite his excellent planning to make it future- and load-ready.
I got it from Google Reader, so it should be accurate, but I can't promise anything. I'll take this page down (and forward any remaining traffic) the moment his server returns to normal. - Travis Smith
Here it is. I'm dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote—the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive.
If you knew me at all in real life, you probably heard the news already from another source, but however you found out, consider this a confirmation: I was born on June 30, 1969 in Vancouver, Canada, and I died in Burnaby on May 3, 2011, age 41, of complications from stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. We all knew this was coming.
That includes my family and friends, and my parents Hilkka and Juergen Karl. My daughters Lauren, age 11, and Marina, who's 13, have known as much as we could tell them since I first found I had cancer. It's become part of their lives, alas.
Of course it includes my wife Airdrie (née Hislop). Both born in Metro Vancouver, we graduated from different high schools in 1986 and studied Biology at UBC, where we met in '88. At a summer job working as park naturalists that year, I flipped the canoe Air and I were paddling and we had to push it to shore.
We shared some classes, then lost touch. But a few years later, in 1994, I was still working on campus. Airdrie spotted my name and wrote me a letter—yes! paper!—and eventually (I was trying to be a full-time musician, so chaos was about) I wrote her back. From such seeds a garden blooms: it was March '94, and by August '95 we were married. I have never had second thoughts, because we have always been good together, through worse and bad and good and great.
However, I didn't think our time together would be so short: 23 years from our first meeting (at Kanaka Creek Regional Park, I'm pretty sure) until I died? Not enough. Not nearly enough.
I haven't gone to a better place, or a worse one. I haven't gone anyplace, because Derek doesn't exist anymore. As soon as my body stopped functioning, and the neurons in my brain ceased firing, I made a remarkable transformation: from a living organism to a corpse, like a flower or a mouse that didn't make it through a particularly frosty night. The evidence is clear that once I died, it was over.
So I was unafraid of death—of the moment itself—and of what came afterwards, which was (and is) nothing. As I did all along, I remained somewhat afraid of the process of dying, of increasing weakness and fatigue, of pain, of becoming less and less of myself as I got there. I was lucky that my mental faculties were mostly unaffected over the months and years before the end, and there was no sign of cancer in my brain—as far as I or anyone else knew.
As a kid, when I first learned enough subtraction, I figured out how old I would be in the momentous year 2000. The answer was 31, which seemed pretty old. Indeed, by the time I was 31 I was married and had two daughters, and I was working as a technical writer and web guy in the computer industry. Pretty grown up, I guess.
Yet there was much more to come. I had yet to start this blog, which recently turned 10 years old. I wasn't yet back playing drums with my band, nor was I a podcaster (since there was no podcasting, nor an iPod for that matter). In techie land, Google was fresh and new, Apple remained "beleaguered," Microsoft was large and in charge, and Facebook and Twitter were several years from existing at all. The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity were three years away from launch, while the Cassini-Huygens probe was not quite half-way to Saturn. The human genome hadn't quite been mapped yet.
The World Trade Center towers still stood in New York City. Jean Chrétien remained Prime Minister of Canada, Bill Clinton President of the U.S.A., and Tony Blair Prime Minister of the U.K.—while Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Kim Jong-Il, Ben Ali, and Moammar Qaddafi held power in Iraq, Egypt, North Korea, Tunisia, and Libya.
In my family in 2000, my cousin wouldn't have a baby for another four years. My other cousin was early in her relationship with the man who is now her husband. Sonia, with whom my mother had been lifelong friends (ever since they were both nine), was still alive. So was my Oma, my father's mom, who was then 90 years old. Neither my wife nor I had ever needed long-term hospitalization—not yet. Neither of our children was out of diapers, let alone taking photographs, writing stories, riding bikes and horses, posting on Facebook, or outgrowing her mother's shoe size. We didn't have a dog.
And I didn't have cancer. I had no idea I would get it, certainly not in the next decade, or that it would kill me.
Why do I mention all this stuff? Because I've come to realize that, at any time, I can lament what I will never know, yet still not regret what got me where I am. I could have died in 2000 (at an "old" 31) and been happy with my life: my amazing wife, my great kids, a fun job, and hobbies I enjoyed. But I would have missed out on a lot of things.
And many things will now happen without me. As I wrote this, I hardly knew what most of them could even be. What will the world be like as soon as 2021, or as late as 2060, when I would have been 91, the age my Oma reached? What new will we know? How will countries and people have changed? How will we communicate and move around? Whom will we admire, or despise?
What will my wife Air be doing? My daughters Marina and Lolo? What will they have studied, how will they spend their time and earn a living? Will my kids have children of their own? Grandchildren? Will there be parts of their lives I'd find hard to comprehend right now?
There can't be answers today. While I was still alive writing this, I was sad to know I'll miss these things—not because I won't be able to witness them, but because Air, Marina, and Lauren won't have me there to support their efforts.
It turns out that no one can imagine what's really coming in our lives. We can plan, and do what we enjoy, but we can't expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won't. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur, that we could never foresee. That's neither bad nor good, but it is real.
I think and hope that's what my daughters can take from my disease and death. And that my wonderful, amazing wife Airdrie can see too. Not that they could die any day, but that they should pursue what they enjoy, and what stimulates their minds, as much as possible—so they can be ready for opportunities, as well as not disappointed when things go sideways, as they inevitably do.
I've also been lucky. I've never had to wonder where my next meal will come from. I've never feared that a foreign army will come in the night with machetes or machine guns to kill or injure my family. I've never had to run for my life (something I could never do now anyway). Sadly, these are things some people have to do every day right now.
The world, indeed the whole universe, is a beautiful, astonishing, wondrous place. There is always more to find out. I don't look back and regret anything, and I hope my family can find a way to do the same.
What is true is that I loved them. Lauren and Marina, as you mature and become yourselves over the years, know that I loved you and did my best to be a good father.
Airdrie, you were my best friend and my closest connection. I don't know what we'd have been like without each other, but I think the world would be a poorer place. I loved you deeply, I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.
I encourage you to go to the original post and comment, if possible.
amazing stuff
I hope by now he knows he was wrong about no longer existing
God Bless Derek and his family
As long as you are unaware of Being, the reality of other humans will elude you, because you have not found your own. Your mind will like or dislike their form, which is not just their body but includes their mind as well. True relationship becomes possible only when there is an awareness of Being. Coming from Being, you will perceive another person’s body and mind as just a screen, as it were, behind which you can feel their true reality, as you feel yours. So, when confronted with someone else’s suffering or unconscious behavior, you stay present and in touch with Being, all suffering is recognized as an illusion. Suffering is due to identification with form. Miracles of healing sometimes occur through this realization, by awakening Being-consciousness in others — if they are ready. ~ Eckhart Tolle Compassion and Reality from The Power of Now
It would be a better thing for him if he did not know. Eternity is going to happen to us, whether we believe it or not.
As someone who endured chemo and lived, that was a tough read... RIP.
Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures. But there are two sides to compassion, two sides to this bond. On the one hand, since you are still here as a physical body, you share the vulnerability and mortality of your physical form with every other human and with every living being. Next time you say "I have nothing in common with this person," remember that you have a great deal in common: A few years from now -- two years or seventy years, it doesn't make much difference-- both of you will have become rotting corpses, then piles of dust, then nothing at all. This is a sobering and humbling realization that leaves little room for pride. Is this a negative thought? No, it is a fact. Why close your eyes to it? In that sense, there is total equality between you and every other creature.
One of the most powerful spiritual practices is to meditate deeply on the mortality of physical forms, including your own. This is called: Die before you die. Go into it deeply. Your physical form is dissolving, is no more. Then a moment comes when all mind-forms or thoughts also dies. Yet you are still there-- the divine presence that you are. Radiant, fully awake. Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.
The realizaton of this deathless dimension, your true nature, is the other side of compassion. On a deep feeling-level, you now recognize not only your own immortality but through your own that of every other creature as well. On the level of form, you share mortality and the precariousness of existence. On the level of Being, you share eternal, radiant life. These are the two aspects of compassion. In compassion, the seemingly opposite feelings of sadness and joy merge into one and become transmuted into a deep inner peace. This is the peace of God. It is one of the most noble feelings that humans are capable of, and it has great healing and transformative power. But true compassion, as I have just described it, is as yet rare. To have deep empathy for the suffering of another being certainly requires a high degree of consciousness but represents only one side of compassion. It is not complete. True compassion goes beyond empathy or sympathy. It does not happen until sadness merges with joy, the joy of Being beyond form, the joy of eternal life.
Wow. One of the few people who can actually handle the reality that death is indeed the end, and not pin their hopes on some fantasy afterworld.
100 billion points of light
on a living breathing vibrating sphere
travelling through the vastness
learning lessons of love and life and death
recognizing the beauty of creation
feeling the spectrum of emotion
receiving the gift
with each breath
solstice prayers
dear friend
blessed be
"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
That is translated through you into action,
And because there is only one of you in all time,
This expression is unique.
If you block it,
It will never exist through any other medium
And be lost.
The world will never have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is,
Nor how valuable it is,
Nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly,
To keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware
Directly to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction,
A blessed unrest that keeps us marching
And makes us more alive than others."
And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is is carried so high
I kiss the Sun's mouth
And dissolve.
And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their cups of wine
And their wild song books all around.
And
For no reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!
When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I am.
“pin their hopes on some fantasy afterworld.”
I am one of those...fantasy after-worlders. I serve a risen Lord. I feel great sorrow for those who can not look forward to an everlasting life in his presence, and you can too.
Can you expand what you mean about a fantasy afterworld? Are you talking about 72virgins or something else? curious....
D’oh! “Leak” should be “Lead” for the title.
"I haven't gone to a better place, or a worse one. I haven't gone anyplace, because Derek doesn't exist anymore. As soon as my body stopped functioning, and the neurons in my brain ceased firing, I made a remarkable transformation: from a living organism to a corpse, like a flower or a mouse that didn't make it through a particularly frosty night. The evidence is clear that once I died, it was over."
Ignoring the fact that he uses the future tense as if it were the past tense, his atheism and naturalism are self-refuting. If his presuppositions were true it was impossible for him to know what he claimed know. He claimed that his knowledge that once he died it was over was based on "the evidence". Really? Did he look everywhere and examine everything in the entire universe? He would have to be omniscient to do that, making himself God. The internal contradictions are apparent in what he wrote. On one hand he says, "What to know, now that I'm dead", and on the other hand he says, "There can't be answers today."
If all he was was a concatenation of molecules and atoms banging around the very rationality he assumes, as well as the love, truth and beauty, good and bad he speaks of to his daughters are all meaningless nonsense. Matter in motion is not "good" or "bad". Love and hate would be nothing more than monistic, blind, electrochemical activity.
What is true is that I loved them. Lauren and Marina, as you mature and become yourselves over the years, know that I loved you and did my best to be a good father.Airdrie, you were my best friend and my closest connection. I don't know what we'd have been like without each other, but I think the world would be a poorer place. I loved you deeply, I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.
He wasn't a very consistent atheist. In spite of himself, his professions of love are eloquent testimony to his inner knowledge of God as Creator, as well as a damning indictment of the futility of his professed Naturalism.
Cordially,
I'm dying from a horrible illness (Pulmonary Fibrosis). I'm now afraid of death because I KNOW that when I pass from this body, I will be in the presence of God. Fantasy I think not.
I’m wondering if the author hasn’t put his toe into the waters of *Cartesian Solipsism.* ;)
Stand in any train station you choose and you’ll always see that some unannounced destinations are more popular than others.
NOT
I’m sorry to hear this and I did just pray for you and your family.
A huge hurdle, IMO, is to see and take things just as they are.
‘As men begin to arouse themselves from slumber, they start to see their own life as a metaphor;
for what, specifically, is unclear, but they feel most assured that their individual existence is
but a metaphor for something greater.
Then as they become able to actually arise from their bed of distraction and step out
of their darkened room into the natural light, metaphors and allegories disappear
in the splendor of everyday things just as they are.’
‘One man says that all of his metaphysical efforts and studies are finally beginning to pay off,
and with such intensity and with such magnitude that on some mornings he is able to stand free
in the middle of the room, holding on to nothing – and put on his socks without falling over and
hurting himself!’
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