Elisson Passes
February 15th, 2019Raconteur, Bon Vivant, Lover of Whale Bacon
I made a little joke yesterday, and it did not work out well.
I was writing about the way deaths seem to surround me right now. My dad is dying a little bit at a time. I just learned of the deaths of my second cousin and his mother. To make things worse, I found out a guy I knew from an Internet forum had died. I wrote this: “If most people I know could just remain alive through the end of this week, I would consider it a big favor.”
A comment then appeared, informing me that Steve Krodman, AKA Elisson, had died. It happened on January 11.
I think that’s sufficient for now. I will be just fine if I don’t get any more news of death during the coming week.
Elisson had several blogs. One was called Blog d’Elisson. Another was called Lost in the Cheese Aisle. He wrote well. He was funny. He was a very likable guy.
Back when I had an Internet radio show, Elisson appeared as a guest. He told me about the time he ate whale bacon. He was visiting Japan, and he found out they made bacon from whale meat, so he tried it. That was classic Elisson. It’s hard to think of another blogger who would come up with that story.
I looked at Lost in the Cheese Aisle (are there really stores with cheese aisles?), and I learned that Elisson had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was a fast-acting variant. In his last entry (dictated), dated December 31, 2018, he said he got his diagnosis in March of last year, so he only lasted something like 9 months. He said he was unable to walk. He spent his time in a wheelchair and in bed, and he required oxygen.
I am not on his blogroll now. I don’t know if that means anything. I don’t recall any flaps between us. Of course, I have become a big proponent of Spirit-led Christianity, and he was Jewish, so maybe he felt I had gone off the deep end. It doesn’t matter to me; I thought he was a great guy. I can certainly understand how my new outlook on life would turn people off. I expect it.
I see he quoted me in his sidebar, with a link. Maybe he had not given up on me.
I wish I could say I think he’s in a happier place, but I can’t. I am very disturbed when I think about it.
I feel like I should hang a sign, like those workplace accident signs. “Nobody I know has died in __ days.”
Life gets serious after you get deep into middle age. When you’re young, you count on people in your age group being around if you want to contact them. Once you hit 50, every time you look someone up, you know you might get an unpleasant surprise.
I have a friend in Miami who is a little older than I am. Smokes like a stove. Smoking doesn’t just cause cancer. It causes COPD, heart attacks, and strokes. It can cause dementia. When I think about him, I get a little concerned. He is determined not to quit, though.
I know of three people from my law school who have died already, and there are probably more. Most people I went to school with were younger than I am.
Death is real, and it’s not far off at all. It’s always waiting to dash out and retrieve, like a ball boy at a tennis match. Or a turkey buzzard beside a busy highway.
When I think about mortality, it helps me adjust to giving my life to Jesus. I’m not giving him much. Barring a surprising outcome, I am much closer to death than I am to my high school graduation, which seems recent in my mind. The persecution I put up with here won’t last long, even if it starts in earnest today. People who are against God can attack me while I live, but they can’t keep me alive past my appointed date. Science has not reached the point where we can put death off indefinitely in order to torment people.
Hell is different, however. The people who end up there will be tormented forever because they won’t be able to die.
On a related note, I think we are working way too hard to extend life. The more I visit my dad in memory care, the more convinced I am. The place is full of people who simply lived too long. Pumping people full of statins, blood thinners, and insulin after their brains stop working is not a kindness. It’s like embalming the living so we can have viewings that last decades.
If we had real confidence in the afterlife and salvation, we would not claw and scratch to stay in this disappointing, unfulfilling world.
These days my dad talks a lot about how nice it will be to be with my mother again.
Steve Krodman was only 66. I wish he had been able to remain here considerably longer, and of course, I wish he had managed to get to know his Messiah. I wish I had known what was going on. At least I could have prayed for him.
February 15th, 2019 at 12:04 PM
I am not challenging you on the life extension thing.
I just think of it frequently, especially as I see people around me with dementia.
Standard dogma says suicide is a loss of hope or lack of faith.
Sucking a shotgun (on a diagnosis I believe) would demonstrate one of two things:
Lack of faith that God will heal me
or
Faith that life will be better on the other side.
When it comes to prolonging other’s lives, when does the alternative become euthanasia?
February 15th, 2019 at 3:47 PM
There was a TV programme on here last night following a group of well-known people round Russia, where they looked at life for old people there.
One of this group was the father of a well-known politician. He was 77 and seemed to be in good health. Asked what he though of doctors, he said something to the effect that “They can’t do much more than tinker round the edges and I don’t believe in them.”
Which seems to me like a good attitude.
February 15th, 2019 at 5:54 PM
“When it comes to prolonging other’s lives, when does the alternative become euthanasia?”
I don’t believe in taking proactive steps to kill people, but I don’t see anything wrong with refraining from trying to beat nature when an elderly person has permanently lost touch with reality.
I don’t know if it matters in my dad’s case, because the drugs he takes may not really be prolonging his life. Various Internet sources suggest the cardiovascular drugs that are so popular now don’t really help people much. I often wonder if drugs damaged my dad’s brain. Statins and warfarin have been linked to dementia.
My dad has been on aspirin, warfarin, statins, and blood pressure pills for decades, and his brain still broke down. As far as I know, he’s still on all his drugs, but his decline continues and has not stopped accelerating.
What he really needed to prevent dementia was a relationship with the Holy Spirit. He could have been delivered from gluttony, drinking, anxiety, and anger. Then he would never have had any circulatory problems.
In my own case, I cannot see submitting to painful, expensive, humiliating, debilitating medical treatment in order to save my life. I don’t think God requires me to do that. I have never seen a scripture suggesting it’s a sin to allow yourself to die.
I have often thought that if I found I had a cancer that required truly bothersome surgery, I would prepare a financial plan, simplify my life, and arrange for the best possible care until I died. People give up limbs, voiceboxes, genitals, intestines, brain regions, jawbones, eyes, and so on, just to stay alive. I’m not very excited about this life even in my healthy, able state, so if I had to give up, say, my kidneys in order to continue, it is very unlikely that I would go along with it.
Of course, I would pray for healing, because God’s healing doesn’t require amputations and colostomies.
My situation is not like my dad’s, since I am a hard core Christian who is used to being healed by God. I have had a lot of success getting myself healed, but I have not done well with other people, so I tend to take a more secular approach with them,relying on doctors. I believe healing is usually coupled with repentance and confession, and while I can make myself do those things readily, other people are generally insulted when you bring them up, and they don’t cooperate. I don’t like to struggle to heal people who won’t do their part.
February 20th, 2019 at 4:11 PM
On being healed. At my age there is not much I need to be healed from. I’ve had health problems, all solvable so far. At some point we must realize all human life on earth must come to an end. A natural end. I’ve been to many funerals lately, but I am 82 and my classmates and friends are all elderly and funerals are a natural at this age.
A dear woman died two weeks ago, I was in Sunday School with her as a girl, she was a part of my growing up years. She had extreme heart problems and refused surgery. So be it, it would have likely killed her anyway and she knew where she was going to be after her earthly death.
Why try at advanced age to prolong the inevitable? Her children were grown, including the grandchildren she raised who were using her. Death was a release from worldly woes caused by others.
She was a wonderful woman, A Christian, and ready to be taken home. So it will be with your father. I am so happy for you for that.
February 20th, 2019 at 11:18 PM
As it happens, I met Steve for the first time during my Road Trip last October. He was in the wheelchair, totally paralyzed from the neck down, but his charisma radiated from him anyway.
After that, I put him and his family on my prayer list. At the top of my list it says: “that all the Jews on the list recognize their Messiah.”
So, we’ll see.
February 21st, 2019 at 8:29 AM
I didn’t know you went through with that trip.
It would have been nice to meet Elisson. I enjoyed talking to him on the Internet.