Not necessarily (not to get into a theological dissertation in MPSIMS, but)…
If you were God, who would you rather have in Heaven, available for after-dinner conversation?
I have amended my sig as a mark of respect.
No - he’d long realised that, if he kept to schedule, his 300th column would be in the millennial January 2001 issue and had declared that that would be the last. That some of us had been anticipating that moment for years made it all the more memorable that the final essay was quite so beautiful a summary.
I might call it a earie coincidence that my main reading at the moment is Ontogeny and Phylogeny, but it’s not. Not when I’ve eagerly devoured his books so often.
What a loss…
(I must, however, be honest - I thought him already deceased. Sorry, Dr. Gould). 
And it obviously won’t change anything, but. . .
Did he die of a recurrence of the mesothelioma or was it a different cancer?
I was wondering about that too. According to The Miami Herald, it was adenocarcinoma, derived from glandular tissue, and not mesothelioma.
I have read his books, but I never heard him lecture.
I feel that I am lesser for the omission.
You are remembered, sir.