We all knew it was coming, but somehow we had managed to ignore the cruelty of reality for a little while. For a moment there, it almost seemed as though Hitch had managed to defeat his cancer. Unfortunately, life is a cruel bitch that kills your heroes prematurely (it’s true that Jack Daniels and Phillip Morris had done most of the damage, but still). Now, the world is a little duller, a little dumber, and a lot less interesting as a result.
Truthfully, I would be more upset if I hadn’t read his last article. In it, he mentioned that had he known of the pain he would have had to endure to survive the cancer, he would have opted against it. It may sound trite, but there is some evidence to suggest that a person having a REASON to live is often a significant indicator of health. I think it wasn’t the cancer but the pain of the treatment that ended him. That’s the sad truth about cancer; the cure is sometimes worse than the disease.
Don’t plan on being sad for very long though. Your grief will soon turn into anger once you read the inane tweets of men like Rick Warren:
My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks. That tweets comes from an actual friend (despite their obvious differences, they seemed to have gotten along well). How many times are you going to overhear some religious jackass gloating that Hitch is burning in Hell for not believing in their specific nonsense?
Even more frustrating is the fact that there is no simple way to demonstrate the obvious stupidity of their assertion. The specter of death haunts us all equally, but our mortality is the only solid proof Christians need of their sadistic fantasies. It’s like arguing with children.
On a selfish note, I never got to cross “having a conversation with Christopher Hitchens” off my bucket list. I hoped perhaps that some of his brilliance might rub off on me. Now the unique arrangement of neurons that comprised his mind have ceased to function, and this pattern is lost forever. Damn you entropy. Why must you rob us of everything we love?
