Oh man...
Marco created Galeon, which was my favorite browser back in the 1.2 days. He'll be missed.
Goodbye Marco
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Goodbye Marco
#22So sorry to hear this; Evince rocks! On a side note, as someone with cancer i'm getting more and more annoyed with people saying 'lost the fight' 'after a long fight' etc. Somehow (and I know more people have this) it makes it feel like you didn't try hard enough. Stop saying that please.
As a long time hospice spouse, I wonder if "Living with cancer" might better capture what matters. The battle metaphor often leads to medical approaches that reduce quality of life and induce pointless suffering. Accepting the inevitable fact of mortality isn't necessarily surrender, sometimes it is innate wisdom.
On that note, I really liked this conversation of D. G. Mayers (who died of cancer in September) regarding this topic. A small excerpt:
"Tony Gwynn died recently, just last month, of salivary gland cancer. (…) He was a great ball player, and a great man. He had salivary gland cancer for 8 years. (…) Every article about Gwynn's death quite rightly celebrated his prowess on the ball field and what a wonderful man he was. The last 4 and a half years of his life disappeared from all of the accounts. The only thing they ever said was that he had a 4-and-a-half year "battle" with cancer. And you know how much I hate that word, "battle." (…) You know, his experience of it--he continued to coach baseball at San Diego State. How did it affect his coaching? What did it do to his religious faith? How did it alter his relationship with his wife? All of this went unsaid, and it just disappeared into one word--battle."
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/07/dg_myers_on_can.htm...
Re: Goodbye Marco
#23So sorry to hear this; Evince rocks! On a side note, as someone with cancer i'm getting more and more annoyed with people saying 'lost the fight' 'after a long fight' etc. Somehow (and I know more people have this) it makes it feel like you didn't try hard enough. Stop saying that please.
I am glad that you brought this up. It annoys and saddens me when people associate will, strength of character and general moral rectitude with surviving cancer. As if those who passed away were lacking in those qualities. Oh your dad died of cancer, so sorry, he must have been a wimp that's why he died. Please dont do this and no my dad doesnt have cancer.
Re: Goodbye Marco
#24I had this weird thought the other day, not sure if it makes sense; We all think that one day we'll grow old, we see old people around us all the time so I guess we assume one day we'll be one of them. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be true for many of us. Goodbye Marco. May you rest in peace. And to you my friends, smell the flowers while you can.
> And to you my friends, smell the flowers while you can.
I'm 35, and I've already lost at least 4 friends. Causes of death: Drunk driving, Suicide, Murder, and bacterial infection/dropped dead.
The friend with the infection was a super-healthy woman who was opening a fitness studio, one of those people that you would expect to grow old, not catch a random bug and die.
Re: Goodbye Marco
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Stop saying that please. Might come across as snarky, but really meaning not to: What's an expression that would be more acceptable?
Well, if you die of something else, these terms are not used. Or maybe I didn't see, but you don't say 'after fighting alzheimers' 'after fighting ALS' etc, they just say; he/she died of X. That feels more fair than taking some kind of process into account whereby one gets the feeling that if you had battled harder you would've come out on top. For many cancers this is simply not the case yet; I was 'lucky', he was n…
Interesting point.
I wonder if one reason for the difference in language is that chemotherapy is so brutal that it ends up feeling like a "battle". Plus maybe that there's a chance of "winning", which isn't there with Alzheimer's or with ALS.
(I'm not justifying the correctness of the word, just speculating on the cause.)
Re: Goodbye Marco
#26Started a tilt for his family if anyone wants to donate:
https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/for-marco-pesenti-grittis-fam...
Re: Goodbye Marco
#27I had this weird thought the other day, not sure if it makes sense; We all think that one day we'll grow old, we see old people around us all the time so I guess we assume one day we'll be one of them. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be true for many of us. Goodbye Marco. May you rest in peace. And to you my friends, smell the flowers while you can.
> And to you my friends, smell the flowers while you can. I'm 35, and I've already lost at least 4 friends. Causes of death: Drunk driving, Suicide, Murder, and bacterial infection/dropped dead. The friend with the infection was a super-healthy woman who was opening a fitness studio, one of those people that you would expect to grow old, not catch a random bug and die.
What bug?
This is something of a fear of mine, especially after my wife received a MRSA infection a few years ago.
Re: Goodbye Marco
#28So sorry to hear this; Evince rocks! On a side note, as someone with cancer i'm getting more and more annoyed with people saying 'lost the fight' 'after a long fight' etc. Somehow (and I know more people have this) it makes it feel like you didn't try hard enough. Stop saying that please.
[deleted]
Re: Goodbye Marco
#29Evince is my favorite PDF reader on Linux. Sad to see that his original author is gone :(
The original Evince was and still is my favourite PDF reader too. Unfortunately the newer versions feature a Gnome 3-style UI that renders the program unusable for me.
Anyway, I hope he had a happy life. RIP.
Re: Goodbye Marco
#30So sorry to hear this; Evince rocks! On a side note, as someone with cancer i'm getting more and more annoyed with people saying 'lost the fight' 'after a long fight' etc. Somehow (and I know more people have this) it makes it feel like you didn't try hard enough. Stop saying that please.
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I expect you're being downvoted for appearing insensitive to a person with cancer. The person you replied to has cancer. It's likely difficult, and it's easy to think of it as a battle -- but the person you replied to is allowed to complain about what we call it, whereas we and the familes of people facing cancer are not allowed to complain about it __to them__. (I also realize that many people with cancer might _prefer_ the "battle" term, as well.)
This is based on something I've read that was very formative [0]. The main idea is that the central person is allowed to complain to anyone, but anyone not at the center of a tragedy is only allowed to complain to people farther from the tragedy. A short version of this is, "comfort goes in, complaints go out", if you think of these layers as rings.
Cancer patient: Can complain to anyone about anything Cancer patient's family: Can complain to anyone __except__ cancer patients about anything. Bystanders (me): basically has no standing to complain about things ("this is so hard for me to deal with!"). ;)
Sorry if this seems a little preachy, because your feelings are valid. I think that the downvotes are mainly because of the way you said them, and on who you replied to. I found this article really helpful in framing my own thoughts and words about tragedies, because I've been inadvertently insensitive in the past about things like this. I hope you enjoy it too.
0: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/07/opinion/la-oe-0407-s...