Sic transit gloria mundi

I've got to stop reading the obituaries. While perusing the death notices in the Buffalo News, as I do when I read the paper online, I came across a familiar name. The younger brother of a former friend died. We all lived in the Maryvale apartments in Cheektowaga, NY, right outside of Buffalo. It mentioned that his mother is still alive (she would have to be in her late 70s at least) but that his father had died. When it listed his brothers and sisters, my friend was listed as the late so and so. We were the same age. It also listed a wife. The brother doesn't seem to ever have gotten married. There is, of course, no way to know when my friend had died. I could probably look it up, but the point of this is that we were the same age. They were from some Scandinavian country that I don't quite remember anymore. My friend had that white, blonde hair. Their mother was very attractive.

Something similar happened last year. I saw that the mother of a friend from elementary school died. I remembered her as a beautiful, very nice lady. I had stayed over at their house a few times as a kid before we moved to Cheektowaga. In fact, when I was showing my daughter around Buffalo when we went back last summer to visit my wife's grave, we drove past their house, and I recounted an incident where their dog had decided to jump from their second floor porch to the grass below and survived. I wondered at that time what had happened to them and where my friend Jamie was. When I saw the death notice later, it listed his brother but said he was the late Jamie. I decided to try and do some research then and found out that Jamie had died in the 1960s. That had a very chilling effect on me. The cause of death was not clear, and I wasn't going to get in touch with his brother to see what happened. "Say, you may not remember me, but we knew each other 40 years ago." I know not everybody has the same relationship with the past as I do. I remembered meeting Jamie at the University of Buffalo one day. We were both freshmen. Though we hadn't seen each other since 5th grade, we recognized each other. We briefly caught up with each other's lives, talked about classes and then said goodbye. He probably died not too long after that. All those years, I had thought of him as alive.

I guess what made this more somber than it should have been, though reminders of our mortality are always somber, was that I just finished clearing out some things of my wife's that I had never gotten around to. I also had to take in our vacuum cleaner to be fixed, and the guy asked about my wife since she had been the one who always took care of that kind of stuff and bought the cleaner at his store.

How brief our existence is on this earth.

Hope for Diabetics?

An article in the newspaper today talked about new research that has "developed a potential cure for Type 2 diabetes" (Sun-Sentinel). The research, done at Washington University in St. Louis, took tissues from embryonic pig pancreases and put them into diabetic rats. The result, according to the article, was that "The tissues helped control blood sugar, curing the rats' diabetes for life." The results between female and male rats were somewhat different as the females had to eliminate high-fat diets for the cure to take place, but male rats didn't need to do that. Imagine, I would no longer have diabetes but could still eat at McDonald's. Life would be good. The other neat thing about this is that the rats' bodies didn't reject the implanted tissue. No immune-suppressing drugs associated with other transplants seem to be needed.

Of course, my neuroapathy, kidney failure, and other problems would not be cured, but at least they wouldn't get any worse because of the diabetes. Ah to be a rat. While testing is beginning on primates, it will be years before humans could benefit from this. On reading that, my hopeful feeling diminished somewhat. My other concern is the word "embryonic."

In related news, the Bush Administration announced that it could not support government funding for this research as it meant destroying embryos in order to get the tissue. Though not opposed to killing and eating pig meat, they are especially fond of pork roast, they felt that, "Even porcine embryos have the right to life."

I'm lying, of course, about that last part. Nobody in the Administration would use a word like "porcine."

Crikey!

It was bizarre to hear on the car radio that the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, had died. The report was brief, so I called my daughter to see if she had heard the news. She had and filled in some of the details. It would, of course, have been ironic if he had been killed by a croc, but that wasn't the case. It was a freak thing in that people don't usually die from stings from a sting ray, but in the wild anything is possible. The barb apparently pierced his chest and his heart. I wonder if he knew he was dying as it happened? Aside from his adventures with wildlife, particularly crocs and snakes, he was a dedicated conservationist, so he lived the life he portrayed. Only 44, he certainly had a lot of life left in him and a lot more to contribute to the world. In that sense, his death is tragic. It certainly is for his wife and small children. His partner was quoted as saying that at least he died doing what he loved. I'm not sure how I feel every time I hear that. Given the choice, he would probably have chosen to continue living doing what he loves. If the oft-stated saying is true, I guess I'll drop over at McDonald's with a quarter pounder with cheese in my hand.

I read the Buffalo News online every day. One of my rituals is to check the death notices. I did that even when I was young, so it's not just a product of my advancing years. There was a death of note in there today related to my life. Sister Marie Canice, my sixth grade teacher at Our Lady Help of Christians, died. Ironically, I was just telling someone the other day about my exploits in sixth grade and about Sister Marie. Sister was a very new, and very young nun in 1959. It was, as I recollect, her first year of teaching. God must have decided to test her early by putting me in her class. Without going over every detail and incident, many of which are chronicled in my short story, "Geepers Creepers," it is fair to say that I presented a challenge to any teacher but especially a new one. From exploding pens to water pistol days to filling a girl's desk with crumpled-up paper, which she had to use smoothed out for the rest of the year, we had a blast in sixth grade. Well, I had a blast. Sister couldn't always prove I did everything, but there wasn't much doubt. She finally took to putting me and my desk out in the hallway. That stopped when the assistant principal came by and found me out there, totally clueless as to why sister was picking on me, and yes I wanted to be part of the class, sister. Sister Marie was told to be more patient. I wonder if that nervous tick she developed stayed with her all these years? At the end of sixth grade, she told me that she could at least say that she had me for a year.

I always wondered if she stayed in teaching and the sisterhood. I did meet her one more time in 1968 at my grandfather's funeral. Someone brought her as a friend of a family friend. When I reminded her of who I was and what she had said to me at the end of sixth grade, I thought I saw her twitching again. I guess it's heartening to know that she stayed with her vocation. It's hard to believe that so many years have passed (until I look in the mirror). Could 47 years pass by that quickly? Sister Marie had to be around 70 when she died. I hope her order didn't still wear that terribly confining habit all these years. Too bad she never knew how I turned out. I certainly wouldn't put a feel-good spin on this and say I am the teacher and person I am today because of her, but maybe I am because of what I put her through. It was never personal. My issues were on a much larger scale in those days, but I have learned to not take them out on other people. I owed her that.

If there is a heaven, that year in sixth grade with me should have earned Sister Marie a place. Requiescet in Pacem.