Goodbye Thai

During a tridaily jaunt over to the jungle of SuddenDebt, I tripped over an announcement that my friend Thai just died of a heart attack.

What to say ??

Words are all we have sometimes, but they can be woefully inadequate, and this is ONE time, that's for sure.

I first "met" Thai (no, never seen him, never touched him, or heard his voice... that's virtual for you, right ?) four years ago on Sudden Debt, and HE was definitely one of the reasons I stuck around on the blog.

A little over a year ago, Thai was responsible for getting Sudden Debt's spawn off, Street Rat Crazy Saloon off the ground. I think he was concerned that our grab the ball and run with it explorations of science, religion, fractals, economics, the Ancien Regime, were going too far off into deep space for Hell's blog, and that opening the saloon would allow Hell to keep the ship on course.

And... WE got to do the deep space exploration in our small, private space.

The honeymoon, just launched days of the saloon were heady stuff for everybody.

And towards the end of MY time in the saloon, when things were getting a little tense, Thai and I had our occasional wrangles, but nothing serious. We.. ribbed each other.

In my book, we were very much alike. Thai had his fractal passion, and I, well, I had other passions.

I haven't forgotten that I'm writing this for other people, so here goes.

Even though I never met Thai, I BET that there are some things that I know about him, and I am almost willing to stick my hand into the fire, that's how much I BELIEVE they are true.

First off..

Thai was an excellent emergency physician, a dedicated doctor, with a very high idea/ideal of what it means to be a doctor.

He was very demanding of himself, and harder on himself than on anyone else.

Even if he got exasperated sometimes with the people who showed up to be cared for, he never treated them as numbers, he saw them as individuals, and he firmly believed in the HIPPOCRATIC oath, the one that doctors are supposed to believe in, by the way, and practice.

He lived life at 100 miles an hour, or more. He was exhilarated to be alive, curious about everything, and excited about finding out new things.

He was... a TRUE scientist.

He was an example to the people around him.

He was a model to his sons. Who can be proud of who their father was.

When the funeral service comes up, wherever it is... there will be MANY people there for Thai. Colleagues, friends, neighbors, maybe even a few patients, who knows. To say goodbye to Thai. To tell his family how much he meant to them. How fond they were of him. How he was anxious to find ways to please people, to help them when and where he could. How he cared deeply about them. How he was.... a peacemaker among men (and women).

I'm letting my imagination play a little bit here, admittedly...

I lost my own father, a prominent medical examiner, to a heart attack when he was 57, and I was much older than Thai's four children, but it remains a shock... to this day, some thirty years later.

Tonight thinking about Thai, the old questions came up again (they never go away, once you've been in the place where you first ask them...).

Thinking about just where HE is, an image came into my mind.

Of Thai, sitting (!!!) SOMEWHERE, with a big beautiful book in his hands (yeah, I know, I know... patience), filled with an undecipherable language on luminous pages. And Thai, looking through it... seeing all those fractals, and finally understanding them the way he never could when he was "here".

Kind of corny, I guess. But... it's keeping me a little bit warm, you know.

Goodbye, Thai.

I will miss you. I miss you... already.

P.S....

You know, the older I get, the more death is an injustice to me, even if it is inevitable, and natural. We are all irreplaceable. But some of us manage to live our lives in such a way as it is even more evident how irreplaceable we really are. Thai was one of those people. It's what makes his death even harder for me to bear...