Quote History Quoted: There are very few good ways to die. Pancreatic cancer is not one of them. A good friend went through that, his time from diagnosis to finality was less than PH's. It is fairly horrific.
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Cancer, even a tiny skin cancer, is an oh shit moment in your life. Many people beat it the 1st or even the 2nd time.
But as a society, we have largely defeated heart disease from killing people in their 50's. The average life expectancy is now over 65 in most nations.
We now live LONG enough to get cancer, as while eventually everyone's heart stops, it's now stopping often after the 1st or 2nd bout w/ cancer, sometimes in the 3rd bout, usually before we have the 3rd dance.
Get hit by a bus or die at 55 of a heart attack, you never have a chance to say goodbye. Cancer, as tragic a death as it is, gives you a chance to say goodbye and make some apologies.
Maybe we'll someday beat cancer - and then we can all live to die of Alzheimer's. I think I'd rather die of cancer than Alzheimer's.
Fatal cancer early, like Paul's, Ed's, or Fatalwishes' sucks. But in the overall scheme of things, that's fairly unusual to die of cancer that young. These cases stand out in our minds b/c they're so unusual.
I'm not trying to impinge on anyone's grief for Paul here - just pointing out that Death comes for us all, sooner or later, and cancer, even if caught late, gives you some time to make things right that other forms of Death do not. Paul made damn good use of the time he had left.