On Untimely Death

I doubt a whole lot of people who happen upon this blog and read it even know who Mike Wieringo was; like I said in a previous post, I didn't know him personally. From the information that was available, though, I gathered a few things: he was a health buff, a well-liked person and apparently a very gentle person. Learnings these things about this person really got me thinking about the nature of death and how it can really catch people off guard at the worst possible time, and how it never seems to take the people that deserve it the most at the time it is most needed.

Yes, I know that last part was a bit brutal, but it cuts to the theme of this particular post, which is how completely mystified I am by the whole concept of "who gets chosen" to die. We all die, eventually, and I for one believe that when we find ourselves on the verge of the afterlife we are measured by how we lived our lives before. But clearly, some of us have to die before others.

In most cases the order of death is a fairly logical affair; the people who are old and/or infirm die first, and the people who are young and healthy die later, after they have become old and infirm. There are things that upset this balance, like wars, accidents and murders, and they are tragic, but to an extent they are understandable. The human hand behind these occurrences often rears its head, and even when it doesn't, depending on the circumstances, somehow people can bring themselves to accept these unfortunate facts of life.

I submit, though, that what truly boggles the mind is the occurrence of deaths like that of Mr. Wieringo, an avid vegetarian and regular exercise buff, dead of a heart attack, of all things, at the very young age of 44. Killed in an accident? Sad, but sure. Murdered in his apartment by a mugger? Terrible, but at the very least attributable to the evil of man. But dead of a heart attack? Considering the way he lived his life and considering how young he was? On its face it just doesn't add up.

I mean, this was essentially an act of God that took this guy's life, and I for one, can't help but ask why? The guy was a comic book artist, and a pretty good one in not only my opinion but those of his fans. He made people happy. He provided something valuable in its own way. And from all indications, he was a nice guy, not the egomaniac that so many comic-book professionals inevitably become.

There are millions of other candidates for what happened to him. Off the top of my head and enumerating the Filipino demographic alone I can think of more than a few, politicians, appointed government officials living on the take, Abu Sayyaf brigands, drug pushers...and the list simply goes on, ranging from the cliche to the more, um, personal choices. I mean, a lot of people on this list often live life to excess, abusing their bodies with food, alcohol, exposure to sexually-transmitted disease, and yet show up time and again on our TV screens and front page headlines in all their corrupt, often corpulent glory. They give nothing of any sort of worth to society; they only live to take, and taking is all they ever do up until the time they die, which in most cases can simply not come soon enough.

I may not have lost a direct relative in so untimely a fashion, but I've had enough of my friends die before ever hitting the age of 30 to feel truly embittered at the seeming arbitrariness of it all.

Marvel editor Tom Brevoort made a good point about living life to the fullest because there simply are no guarantees, and I won't refute that, but my gripe is that so many of the people who form a blight on humanity are living life to the fullest; how come they're still here?