All too brief a time

[caddyman]

I just found out that my oldest on-line friend is dead.

Other than people I know personally and whose friendship has continued online, or additional friendships which have developed in that way, Kerry was the first person I met online in 1996 and kept up a regular correspondence with and even met when he came over from Vancouver a couple of years back.

I was in touch with him a few months back, but after my PC crashed, I never got round to reinstalling ICQ until today, so it came as a hell of a shock to find that his sister had announced his death. Kerry was diabetic, but didn't care much for the medical regime it imposed on him. It seems that this dislike of the medical and dietary aspects of his condition led him to neglect his medication.

He died unexpectedly a couple of days ago in his sleep, from flu complicated by his diabetes.

He was a fine bloke with quirky and impish sense of humour. He should have been coming to the UK for a few weeks next summer; he was looking forward to that, as were several of his friends (who know each other through him). We'll never get to meet up for that foraging party through the Canadian Rockies, now, a plan that was always just one more year away.

Plans are afoot for some of his UK friends to meet up and raise a glass in his memory. I think Kerry would have liked that.

To quote Kerry's sister, Louise, from his website:

- If you are sick with diabities or asthma or any other treatable disease, treat it. NOT treating your disease affects more than just yourself.

- If you have a hunch follow through with it. I don't care what anyone tells me. I SHOULD have woken Kerry and made him go the hospital in the morning. I SHOULDN'T have waited. I will wonder why for the rest of my life.

- Exercise

- Get out, experience life.

- Love your family. Kerry was 40, I'm 33 I thought I had all kinds of time with him. I took him for granted.

That's knocked the stuffing out of my weekend.

Comments

[sea-strands.livejournal.com]

That is a shocking thing to find out. Also his sister sounds obviously knocked sideways by what happened and how it happened. It's hard; often when we have illnesses we just want to be like everybody else, and the restrictions placed on us by the condition or the doctors can seem so either namby pamby or just getting in the way of how we would choose to live. I hope Kerry enjoyed his lifestyle and that he would look back and say he had a good one.
When you do, raise your glass for me too.

XXX

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I think he did enjoy his life style: he was an upbeat kind of bloke. The glass-raising will be done in due course!

XXX

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

it's never good to increase your body count. I can only offer my sympathy and the promise that I will boot bytepilot about eating healthy for diabetes (which runs in his family.)