Michael Gerson, the former Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist died Thursday. Mr. Gerson had a gift for articulating what it means to be human. After receiving a cancer diagnosis, in December of 2013, he wrote: "Each of us is conceived with a seed of mortality that can’t be surgically removed. It grows until it kills us, hopefully after a long life that honors the incredible, temporary privilege of living. We are, as W.B. Yeats harshly put it, 'fastened to a dying animal.'"
He continued: "That, but not only that. At every stage, even in the manner of their dying, people can demonstrate they are something more. I recall my Italian, New Yorker grandmother — full of years and full of cancer (the result of a lifelong smoking habit) — telling me through some of her last, gasping breaths: 'You have made me so very happy.' Such are the gifts human beings can give each other, even when there is nothing else to give."
Thank you, Michael, for sharing your humanity with the rest of us! May God welcome you into his eternal Kingdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment