News From Dej's Family

Today I received an email from Dej's first life brother Andy.

"Hi [Bock],

I heard from the medical examiner and it turns out that [Dej] had bacterial pneumonia. It was a very bad infection that he probably had for some time and it went untreated. We are all very surprised that he didn't reach out to anyone including a doctor or hospital since antibiotics would probably have saved his life. We shall never know why he chose this path. I am so very glad he had a good friend in you for all those years. He struggled to get along with people so you must have been very special to him. Thanks for your friendship with my brother [Dej].

Andy"

This is my response to Andy.

"Hello Andy,

Thank you so much for the update!

Mike had an ugly cough for a long time, but for some reason, he refused to see a doctor about it - despite much nagging from me. It is sad to realize that something so simple as a cure of antibiotics most likely would have saved his life.

I am sending you the words I shared at the memorial we had for [Dej] and two of the many hundreds of pictures [Dej] has shared with me over the years. Both the pictures are several years old (SL avatars look much better these days). The one called “Mother of the Bride” is one [Dej] sent me when I was getting partnered, while the one called “Dej at his downfall” shows him standing at a place on the sim were I used to accuse him of ditching his husbands and “all” his lovers (I put lots of skeletons in the waters below to represent the “tons, and tons of men laying there” – a gross exaggeration, but we had fun about it anyway.)

As long as I remain in SecondLife and have the sim, Dej’s downfall will always remain. Dej will also share a memorial on the sim with my former partner Ars, who like his brother [Dej] also died of - untreated - double pneumonia in 2010. (What is it with Americans and health care?) 

Dej was very dear to me and it was a pleasure to have been a part of his life.

Thanks again for the information, Andy.

All my best wishes to you and the rest of Mike’s family in [first] life,[Bock]"

The pictures I attached to the response were these two.

"Mother of the Bride" (March 8, 2014)

"Dej at his downfall"

From Children and Fools...

There is a Swedish saying that goes, "From children and fools you get to hear the truth". I thought of it when I was reading about the United States federal government shutdown today and came across a quote from Michele Bachmann in an interview with World Net Daily (via Joe.My.God.) 

The federal shutdown was brought about by the Republicans in the House of Representatives. Michele Bachmann is an American Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Minnesota's 6th congressional district.

The whole shutdown of the federal government of the greatest democracy in the world is extremely bewildering and totally offsetting for most of us not from the United States. We cannot imagine anyone going to these lengths, and to do so repeatedly is surely not helpful for the image of the United States abroad. 

Today I atleast, thanks to Ms. Bachmann, got an inkling of why the House Republicans were prepared to go so far.

“I think the reason is because President Obama can’t wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency on more government health care. Because, once they enroll millions of more individual Americans it will be virtually impossible for us to pull these benefits back from people.”

The fact that American Republicans are afraid that the American public will get used to a universal. affordable, efficient and decent health care system, that all the other civilized and democratic countries in the world already offer their citizens, is scary and makes one (i.e. me) wonder why anyone in the world would vote for such people.