I’m here because he was a good friend. I’m here because he posted occasionally on these forums, under the nick of “Reemul.”
I’m here because he died two days ago.
32 years old with cystic fibrosis… I understand that’s practically elderly for someone with that disease. He got a wholesale lung transplant back in December, and he could BREATHE for the first time in years.
So, of course, life just has to give him a fever from a sinus infection which segues (perhaps directly, perhaps not) into coughing up the blood that’s coated his lungs and FUCKING KILL HIM WEEKS BEFORE HIS THIRTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY.
Yeah, I know there was no “fairness” clause in the contract we signed with reality (as Reem himself once put it). But goddammit, the extra nine months just wasn’t good enough. Granted, it was enough time for me to see him alive and breathing one last time, but couldn’t it have been a year? Maybe two? Give him TIME to enjoy a state of life he hadn’t known for so long?
I’d known him for eight years. He changed my life in some hugely important ways. I managed, thank God, to talk to him nearly every day over the Internet, when he wasn’t in some hospital or another. He was one of the best friends I’ll ever have the privilege of knowing. And I’m going to his memorial service on Monday. What exactly is wrong with that picture?
One final word, if I can make a plea to a group of people I hardly know: do two things for me, or more properly, for him. First, sign up as an organ donor. Secondly, make a donation to any well-established charity that funds research into cystic fibrosis. Make it in the name of John Robert Stoker, one of the best human beings ever to walk the face of this miserable planet.