I'm not sure of what to say about my friend WDS. He was my best man when I got married 40 years ago We were very close when we were in college, but we drifted apart over the years. Both of us lost our wives to the same type of cancer. Both of us had a strong interest in computers. But he took a very different path than I did in life. WDS went deep into the technology rabbit hole, while I stayed closer to the business world. He worked hard to avoid becoming technically obsolescent, while I stayed in a stable position with a dying technology. Yet, our friendship lasted..
Things changed when our wives passed away. WDS always felt that he should have been a sailor on a 3-masted ship, sailing the oceans and exploring new worlds. With his wife, they planned to tour the country in a custom-built mobile home on wheels. That dream ended when his wife died. I was with him when she took her own life, as she wanted to die on her own terms. She did not want to be doped up in hospice and kept breathing to please a society that couldn't let a woman die with dignity instead of in pain.
Once his wife died (I won't fill in any of the blanks my readers might have), he was harassed by the DA in the city in which he lived. It took 6 months for things to clear, and some valuable items were stolen by the very police department who were supposed to investigate the case. (I can vouch for one thing: WDS could not have prevented his wife's suicide if he wanted to.) After things cleared, and his wife's death ruled a suicide, WDS left the NYC area for good and landed in Florida.
WDS and I had occasional contact via email after that, and he couldn't understand how I lost interest in the nitty gritty of technology. To me, there was much more to life than making a machine get up and dance. (If I were young, I'd likely have gone into robotics and made the machine dance. But that's another story.) One time, when I reached out to him, he didn't respond. So, I reached out to an organization he was associated with and sent out a feeler. Still no response. It took him a while to get back to me. He had suffered a brain aneurysm, and no longer had the verbal ability he once had. He was no longer able to speak, as he lost much of his brain's ability to quickly retrieve words and speak them. Instead, he was forced to constantly use a thesaurus to create sentences to express his thoughts in writing. What would take him 5 seconds to say now took him a half hour or more. So, I never had the chance to speak with him again.
The other day, I tried to reach WDS at his long term email address. The domain he used was no longer in existence. I had no other email address, but I did have a phone number. So I texted him. No response. At this time, I'd bet that WDS has had more maladies, and may either be in a nursing home or has passed away. Either way, if I'm visiting his neck of the woods, I'll knock on the door of his last known address (that I could find) and see if he's still alive. If so, I hope he's doing well.
