What's special about Aaron Winborn is not that he died. We are all going to die. Aaron Winborn lived.
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Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
11–20 of 146 posts
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who knows? the answer only serves to let you judge u/Yuioup. Maybe they know someone with ALS, maybe they are a troll looking to use sympathy points for fake Internet points (now convertible to crypto currency and real world currency!) Maybe they knew the person who died and are trying to commemorate them. Hopefully your prompt will let them answer with grace. If not, why did you ask... and so rudely, too
I didn't find the question to be rude.
"OK, but why now" can be rude in certain contexts, especially sensitive ones like this, but the ellipses push it over the edge into "definitely has a rude tone" (which maybe they did not intend, but I'm only explaining what creates a rude tone in the written word).
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#13This reminds me of the Last Lecture by Professor Andy Pausch. It is a lecture that will really hit you in the feels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7zzQpvoYcQ
It is also an excellent book.
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok but... why post it now?
Who knows? the answer only serves to let you judge u/Yuioup. Maybe they know someone with ALS, maybe they are a troll looking to use sympathy points for fake Internet points (now convertible to crypto currency and real world currency!) Maybe they knew the person who died and are trying to commemorate them. Hopefully your prompt will let them answer with grace. If not, why did you ask... and so rudely, too
My uncle died of ALS. I find it less scary than Alzheimer's disease but still a truly awful way to go. He wasted away. He was unable to really sleep because every time he fell asleep he would have a subconscious reaction to the breathing machine that triggered panic and woke him up. So he was pumped full of benzos in order to keep his anxiety lower, which made him quite out of it. He was in a medicare-accepting full time care facility which was extremely dirty, smelly, and full of workers who honestly didn't give a fuck, and they expressed this in many overt and subtle ways. The only comfort he got was from his family who visited every day to speak and read to him. He was 78 years old, so at least my uncle had a much fuller life than Aaron, as dying of that at 46 is a pure tragedy.
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#15Given what I would consider the eternal preciousness of a human, and the fleeting insignificance of computer software, I found it strange he opened with "I am a developer for Drupal." For example, why did he place that before his being a father?
I think people too often miss the significance of their own existence, independent of their relatively brief tasks and accomplishments. I certainly do not mean to belittle or speak poorly of anyone's accomplishments, but the importance of simply being is so significant and people so rarely appreciate that significance.
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#16He also wrote this book for his children before his passing.
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-Daddy-Aaron-Winborn/dp/1533...
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#17Thank you for posting Aaron's story.
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#18I personally like posts like this; a sobering reminder of our own mortality: memento mori . It hopefully motivates us to thrive, flourish, and cherish what really matters -- friendship, kindness, humility, love -- and to leave the world a little better than we found it. And if you're curious, the Aaaron Winborn Award is still going strong[1]! [1] https://www.drupal.org/community/cwg/aaron-winborn-award
Hopefully it also starts us on a path of treating death as a problem to solve, so we can die on our own terms instead of being forced to do so by a cruel reality. https://www.sens.org/ https://www.lifespan.io/ https://www.buckinstitute.org/
I would rather we change our view on death. Death has always been a constant since life became a thing. Even the mightiest stars in the skies are destined to die one day.
After you die, your consciousness fades, and so do all your desires and regrets.
To me, death is the ultimate respite.
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#19Given what I would consider the eternal preciousness of a human, and the fleeting insignificance of computer software, I found it strange he opened with "I am a developer for Drupal." For example, why did he place that before his being a father? I think people too often miss the significance of their own existence, independent of their relatively brief tasks and accomplishments. I certainly do not mean to belittle or…
Given what I would consider the eternal preciousness of a human, and the fleeting insignificance of computer software, I found it strange he opened with "I am a developer for Drupal." For example, why did he place that before his being a father?
Maybe he just knew the audience that he was speaking to. After all, if it wasn't for that he probably wouldn't be linked here.
No need to overanalyze.
Re: Monday was my 46th birthday and likely my last (2013)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who knows? the answer only serves to let you judge u/Yuioup. Maybe they know someone with ALS, maybe they are a troll looking to use sympathy points for fake Internet points (now convertible to crypto currency and real world currency!) Maybe they knew the person who died and are trying to commemorate them. Hopefully your prompt will let them answer with grace. If not, why did you ask... and so rudely, too
My uncle died of ALS. I find it less scary than Alzheimer's disease but still a truly awful way to go. He wasted away. He was unable to really sleep because every time he fell asleep he would have a subconscious reaction to the breathing machine that triggered panic and woke him up. So he was pumped full of benzos in order to keep his anxiety lower, which made him quite out of it. He was in a medicare-accepting full…
> He was in a medicare-accepting full time care facility which was extremely dirty, smelly, and full of workers who honestly didn't give a fuck, and they expressed this in many overt and subtle ways. The only comfort he got was from his family who visited every day to speak and read to him.
This is a very uncomfortable reality about our care system and the way our society is structured in general. Nobody deserves this kind of treatment, but we also don't really have the lattitude in our lives to spend time caring for our family. Also this kind of care is commoditized by our insurance system where paying for these kinds of systems is more supported than assisted care in-home.
I'm hoping that as a result of COVID with people finding more lattitude to work flexibly from home and more people focussing on their families that more people can avoid this kind of end-of-life care.