Well, sad to report I didn't get up there in time, I just got an email today from a mutual friend, he died yesterday.

When I spoke to him on May 12, he said he had 'months' to live.

It's been 9 days today. Yesterday was 8.

Wow.

I'll be going up in a few days for the funeral.

Cancer sucks.

Tell that guy who's burned out, my buddy Brian would have gladly traded places with him.

http://www.anchorriverlodge.com/about_us.php

 

When I get down in the dumps, I go to a titty bar. It cures most ailments.

 

Not bad Dusty, none of us know how long we have, there is no security you may as well enjoy it while you can.

 

I had a great aunt once who lived into her late 90's. By then everyone whom she had really known was long gone. Everything she liked to do she couldn't. She was ready to go but time was not through with her yet.

I can see how people can live past the end of their own usefulness. The Bar story reminds me of the play "The Death of a Salesman". As with the main character in the play I have known plenty of older airline captains who had lost everyone they had ever cared for due to the career.

Years of command had distorted their personality into that of a dictator and unable to function in regular society. The people in their lives were subordinates who were required to interact with them. The job was all they had left to hold onto. On retirement day they when they took the stroll down the jetway for the last time it looked as though they were walking the plank. I always wondered what happened to those guys. Many of them passed away only a few years after retirement.

Tragic and cruelly harsh when someone young dies.

Skyhigh

 

FlyJSH,

I would have him read Victor Frankel's "Man's Search for Meaning". A psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor Dr Frankel turned his experience into a study of people who were able to survive and recover after truly loosing everything.

Sometimes we have to create a purpose for ourselves. If you are going to be here anyway and are able to function then you have an obligation to those who are not to try and do something useful with your time.

If you don't want to live for yourself then live for others. He could donate his time and resources to charity. I am sure that in time he will discover that his benevolent efforts will offer a grand return.

Skyhigh

PS If USMCFLR was here I am sure that he would remind us all that everyone has reason to hope.

 

As a bartender, you get to hear bunches of stories, most sad. Many just want someone to listen to them. Women, in talking through, find their own solutions. Men want fixes, they really respond well to challenges.

Bet him a round that he can't go out and try one new thing a day for a week. Those new things have to be substantial, like attending a class or a wildly different haircut, maybe even parking the usual ride and renting something fun and not sensible. Suggest he attend an adult beginner's ballet class, crossfit for dummies, or, a yoga class. That's where the girls who are mostly with it hanging out, not in a bar.

 

Very sorry to hear the sad news.


Honest question--do you know ANYONE who is/was happy being an airline pilot? Gee... maybe you should hang out with a different crowd. I know plenty of pilots and other people in the airline biz and they wouldn't trade their jobs for anything else. Do they have crap days and crap times in their careers----sure they do---but so does everyone else in the work force.

 

You must understand that there are two SkyHighs. One of them still wants a job with Alaska, and recently posted that he would take it today if it were offered. The other SkyHigh has been pre-emptively bashing the career and all who pursue it, trying to wake from a dream that stubbornly continues to live but refuses to come true. APC is the arena in which the two SkyHighs have been fighting each other, for many years now.

 

I was unsure if I wanted to point that out....thank YOU for doing it, Tom. I feel bad on some level for someone who seems so conflicted AND tormented.

 

He does, me, at least he knows me online. I sit 0430 ready reserve tomorrow and am still delighted to be alive and working, especially working this career.