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On October 20, 2004, my father passed away at the age of 52. That day was one of the most bizarre days of my life.
At the time, I was in Atlanta, GA, while my seven-month-pregnant wife and our son were still home in Tulare, CA, over 2,000 miles away. I had been out of work for much of the previous year, so I took the job in Atlanta, knowing that it would be almost two months before we could save up enough to move out there.
In the previous five months, I had become aware of the possibility of ending aging. I had learned about Dr. Aubrey de Grey and his theories, and I was fascinated with the possibilities for society and for my family. My father had some health issues, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and a family history of heart disease. It sounded serious, but his father was still alive and kicking, despite multiple heart-related episodes (including a heart attack 25 years earlier), so I had always just figured that my dad would live to a good old age. With my new knowledge of the direction of regenerative medicine in the next few decades, I now had a hope that he might just make it, that he might have a chance to see the end of aging.
I began donating to the MPrize, what little money I could afford anyway. At first, I had doubts about how quickly the medicine could really be developed. But by that fateful day in October, I had convinced myself that I would almost certainly live to see the end of aging, and it was for my father and mother that I would do what I could to accelerate investment in the relevant biomedical research. I had even tried to broach the subject with him in September, though he was as ingrained as the rest of society with the notion of the fixedness of aging.
Then my mother delivered the news that shattered my otherwise normal life. Words cannot adequately describe how I felt for the next few hours, days, weeks... To be sure, I was in a daze. I can remember walking in that Atlanta suburb, with no destination in mind, talking to my wife on my cell phone. I remember ending up at a wooded park on a hillside, the air full of mosquitoes, my wife doing her best to console me. I remember going into the house that I was staying at in Atlanta, pulling up to the piano, and digging up some sheet music. I found music for the second movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata, an initially somber piece, and I can remember trying to read the music through the blurriness of tears, doing my best to focus on the music and not on the future. The music picks up warmth as it progresses, and this lifted my spirits a little as I struggled with the piece.
It's been nearly three and a half years. Shortly after he passed away, I joined the ranks of the 300 at the MPrize, using his death as the impetus for my joining. In the last month I've found a rebirth of my sense of loss, brought about by a renewed effort to remember him and involve myself in hobbies that we had once enjoyed together. It's a bittersweet set of emotions that reminds me how much I love life. I miss him, but I have not forgotten him.
At the time, I was in Atlanta, GA, while my seven-month-pregnant wife and our son were still home in Tulare, CA, over 2,000 miles away. I had been out of work for much of the previous year, so I took the job in Atlanta, knowing that it would be almost two months before we could save up enough to move out there.
In the previous five months, I had become aware of the possibility of ending aging. I had learned about Dr. Aubrey de Grey and his theories, and I was fascinated with the possibilities for society and for my family. My father had some health issues, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and a family history of heart disease. It sounded serious, but his father was still alive and kicking, despite multiple heart-related episodes (including a heart attack 25 years earlier), so I had always just figured that my dad would live to a good old age. With my new knowledge of the direction of regenerative medicine in the next few decades, I now had a hope that he might just make it, that he might have a chance to see the end of aging.
I began donating to the MPrize, what little money I could afford anyway. At first, I had doubts about how quickly the medicine could really be developed. But by that fateful day in October, I had convinced myself that I would almost certainly live to see the end of aging, and it was for my father and mother that I would do what I could to accelerate investment in the relevant biomedical research. I had even tried to broach the subject with him in September, though he was as ingrained as the rest of society with the notion of the fixedness of aging.
Then my mother delivered the news that shattered my otherwise normal life. Words cannot adequately describe how I felt for the next few hours, days, weeks... To be sure, I was in a daze. I can remember walking in that Atlanta suburb, with no destination in mind, talking to my wife on my cell phone. I remember ending up at a wooded park on a hillside, the air full of mosquitoes, my wife doing her best to console me. I remember going into the house that I was staying at in Atlanta, pulling up to the piano, and digging up some sheet music. I found music for the second movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata, an initially somber piece, and I can remember trying to read the music through the blurriness of tears, doing my best to focus on the music and not on the future. The music picks up warmth as it progresses, and this lifted my spirits a little as I struggled with the piece.
It's been nearly three and a half years. Shortly after he passed away, I joined the ranks of the 300 at the MPrize, using his death as the impetus for my joining. In the last month I've found a rebirth of my sense of loss, brought about by a renewed effort to remember him and involve myself in hobbies that we had once enjoyed together. It's a bittersweet set of emotions that reminds me how much I love life. I miss him, but I have not forgotten him.
