Goodbye, Randy Pausch

It's a rare thing for so many regular people to become aware of the death of another regular person.

Like millions of others, I was touched by Dr. Randy Pausch's Last Lecture, given after his terminal diagnosis, and shared globally via the internet.

Read this for more from someone who knows ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120951287174854465.html?mod=null_topbox

I don't want to take anything away from this man's life, and there's little chance my comments will, since no one who knows me knows him or his family.

But there's a thought that came up over and over again, toward the end of the Last Lecture, and repeatedly during his Time Management lecture (which I watched, since he said he thought it was more important, and I was curious -- and yes, a bit of a procrastinator).

I felt the time pressure in his life, which was there before the terminal diagnosis. Some white anti-racist activists who have become aware of the way some of us put the to-do list before human relationships have experienced it as time oppression.

I think after the diagnosis the only time pressure he felt was to spend time with his family, and leave clear evidence behind for his children that he loved them.

White privilege helped him do that, as did the love and concern and resources he had earned. I can't ignore that. There's whiteness in our living, and in our dying.

How many men and women are dying and leaving partners and children behind and do not have the resources to leave anything but the shell of the body and the memories a mind and heart can hold?

I do not begrudge his widow and children a bit of what he was able to leave.

I just don't want us to forget the inequality that prevents everyone from having such a good death.