stuff tagged with "death"

Chad Gilbert, New Found Glory's Founding Guitarist, Dead at 45

🔗 a linked post to rollingstone.com » — originally shared here on 2026-09-22

There have been some high-profile deaths lately, but none of them punched me harder than this one.

Gilbert continued to be positive throughout his cancer battle. “I have my crying moments where, like everyone, I have to let it out,” he said. “But I like that we can turn it around into something positive… It’s always been just to inspire and grow a community of people that want to go to our shows and smile and have a good time.”

I've had Listen Up! on constant rotation this year. The entire album is wall-to-wall positivity and encouragement, keeping my spirits high even if things seem bleak.

Life will kick you down Be sure of that But stand up, grab it's throat, and yell, "you've met your match."

We All Want Impossible Things

🔗 a linked post to amzn.to » — originally shared here on 2024-07-29

We All Want Impossible Things is a novel which follows the journey of a woman whose best friend is in hospice, living out her final days after fighting a tough battle with cancer.

I started this book a couple months ago and got up to about 70% of the way through before putting it aside.

I'm pretty sure I let it sit because I didn't want to see how it ended. Obviously the death was going to come, but I wasn't quite ready to take on someone else's outlet for grief.

That is, until this past week, when I was in search of something to help me process my own grief.

Last week, I learned that a really good friend of mine died unexpectedly from a heart attack, which set me up for one of the worst mental health stretches I've experienced in recent months.

The last 30% of the book provided some much needed catharsis and meaning. Although the main character's experience wasn't directly similar to mine, it gave me some well considered insights into what love and friendship is all about.

If you're also grieving, I highly recommend this book.

The Brutal Wonders of a Late-Summer Run

🔗 a linked post to plus.thebulwark.com » — originally shared here on 2024-04-06

For cradle Catholics like me, death is forever a part of how you see the world: how you pray, how you celebrate, how you tell stories and create art. But that doesn’t make your awareness of your inevitable death any easier. The thought of not being with my wife and my daughters, of never seeing my family again—these thoughts overtake me with an ambiguous frisson, something like the rush of ecstatic exhaustion I feel somewhere near the top of the hill.

I won’t run forever. But running feels like a practice inherited from some ancient tradition, something primal and odd. I run in the heat to run into the summer, to keep the heat going as the evening light begins to dim.

Ugh, I really need to stop reading powerful essays about running.

Eventually, one of them will make me pick up a new pair of shoes and get in a couple laps around the block.

How Doctors Die

🔗 a linked post to zocalopublicsquare.org » — originally shared here on 2012-01-19

It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

Such a striking article, especially considering one of my close friends came very close to death not too long ago. If it came down to it, I'd rather be in a hospice situation than be stuck in an ICU until and die a long, painful, costly death (or live a long, painful, costly life).