Life – Page 8 – nadreck.me

As some (most) of you know, I’ve been on a MUD called AVATAR for seven years now. One of the things that really kept me playing it for so long was the sense of community that exists there. It’s like an extended family in many ways, and was made moreso by getting to know some of the players and other immortals in real life. (For instance, the owner of the MUD, Snikt, is both a friend and a business partner, and we would never have met without the MUD.)

One of our regular players died last night. Last week he had gone in for a routine tonsillectomy, and during the operation they knicked an artery. He was sent home afterwards, but ended up back in the hospital the following night, and slipped into a coma not long after. It continued to get worse, with a period during which he was brain dead for six minutes, causing irreversible brain damage even if he ever awoke from the coma. His parents signed a Do Not Resuscitate order yesterday, and he passed away at 1am last night. He was 19.
Continue reading “Krelian”

I will be the first to admit, I have always been a prideful man. I am proud of my family, my friends, the capabilities and potentials they have, the things they’ve done, who they are. There are far worse things to be prideful about, but nevertheless it is just as bad as any other thing to be proud of: it creates the illusion of merit based acceptance, instead of accepting purely for the sake of acceptance.

I visited my grandmother today, a woman whom has done more in her life than most. She raised five children, traveled the globe, embroiled herself in community projects, and otherwise occupied herself with always something. She is extremely intelligent, with a degree from Radcliffe; if one were to try to think of an example to sum up the type of person she is, I would recall that she gave my father permission to marry my mother because he managed to beat her at Scrabble. She could do the New York Times crossword puzzle in under an hour (and would do so, regularly).

She is now 90, half paralyzed, and bed-ridden. Her mental facilities (in particular her short term memory) have eroded because of this, and I am simultaneously furious and upset to see her like this.
Continue reading “The Intensity of an Unfettered Soul”