REMEMBERING MY BROTHER
April 20th has been a sad day for several years, being the birthday of my late brother, Christopher R Cole. For the first few years of the company, Chris worked for us part time, more so he and I could spend time together than for any other reason.
Christopher was his mother's son, just as I am my father's son. While my father and I are both military engineers, my mother was a nurse and my brother a psychologist. He worked with deeply disturbed people, and was for several years Amarillo's resident expert on UFO abductions (people who could not face their real problems imagined that they were UFO abductees; Chris had all of the books and could tell in a session or two which book the patient was copying his imagined experiences from) and once helped a seriously disturbed man who imagined himself to be a serial killer (Christopher eventually found the books the man had read, and was able to help the man after "catching" him in his lies about being a serial killer).
Christopher went through a very difficult divorce and became deeply depressed. He got sicker and sicker and would not accept the urging of my mother to get to a doctor for a checkup. He eventually was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and went through a fairly rough ride before passing away alone at midnight in a hospital. I will always remember the day that I tried to force him to go to the doctor, a few months before he was diagnosed, and allowing him to leave the office with a promise he would go to the doctor tomorrow. I knew he was lying to me, but I had my own life to deal with and just gave up arguing with him. Had I somehow forced him to go to the doctor, they probably would have caught "it" in time for him to have survived.
The moral of the story, and the reason I am inflicting it upon you, gentle readers, is that if someone around you is obviously sick and not going to the doctor, somehow find a way to make him go. They don't even have to be THAT sick. Someone who is depressed, seriously overweight, not sleeping well, or shows a sudden loss of energy or strength or weight, or any other sudden-onset problem, should be encouraged, bribed, and if necessary forced to go see a doctor. It could be a matter of life and death. Problems caught early and easier to deal with.
For that matter, is there some relative or friend of yours who lives alone and you see maybe once or twice a year? Maybe you should call this person and meet for lunch, just give them some human contact.
Christopher was his mother's son, just as I am my father's son. While my father and I are both military engineers, my mother was a nurse and my brother a psychologist. He worked with deeply disturbed people, and was for several years Amarillo's resident expert on UFO abductions (people who could not face their real problems imagined that they were UFO abductees; Chris had all of the books and could tell in a session or two which book the patient was copying his imagined experiences from) and once helped a seriously disturbed man who imagined himself to be a serial killer (Christopher eventually found the books the man had read, and was able to help the man after "catching" him in his lies about being a serial killer).
Christopher went through a very difficult divorce and became deeply depressed. He got sicker and sicker and would not accept the urging of my mother to get to a doctor for a checkup. He eventually was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and went through a fairly rough ride before passing away alone at midnight in a hospital. I will always remember the day that I tried to force him to go to the doctor, a few months before he was diagnosed, and allowing him to leave the office with a promise he would go to the doctor tomorrow. I knew he was lying to me, but I had my own life to deal with and just gave up arguing with him. Had I somehow forced him to go to the doctor, they probably would have caught "it" in time for him to have survived.
The moral of the story, and the reason I am inflicting it upon you, gentle readers, is that if someone around you is obviously sick and not going to the doctor, somehow find a way to make him go. They don't even have to be THAT sick. Someone who is depressed, seriously overweight, not sleeping well, or shows a sudden loss of energy or strength or weight, or any other sudden-onset problem, should be encouraged, bribed, and if necessary forced to go see a doctor. It could be a matter of life and death. Problems caught early and easier to deal with.
For that matter, is there some relative or friend of yours who lives alone and you see maybe once or twice a year? Maybe you should call this person and meet for lunch, just give them some human contact.
posted by Federation Commander at 10:36 AM
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