Another forgotten soul

I did a post a few months ago about a cemetery I visited in NY. It was a melancholy experience that caused me to reflect on my mortality. Recently, a friend and former co-worker, Mark Hagenue, died suddenly. It was discovered he had liver cancer. this also caused me to reflect on my mortality. I say suddenly because they had given him two months to live and he only live two weeks. Prior to his death, Andrea and I had opportunities to visit with him in the health care facility where he was being cared for. I had a long conversation with him on my first visit and I tried to discuss options with him. Those were chemotherapy, or even replacement of his liver from a donor. The liver is the only organ in our body that will regenerate itself from a partial liver. Therefore a donor would only have to donate part of his/her liver. This makes the treatment of liver cancer highly likely to be successful. After discussing these options with Mark, he made it abundantly clear he was not interested in any kind of treatment. He was 70 years old and didn't want to go through with any treatments. He was perfectly content to just give up and die. I tried to reason with him to no avail. Andrea went with me a second time to talk with him. Still no success. It was like he just gave up. I asked how his family felt about it and were they going to come visit him. He said probably not. His sister lives in Rome and he hadn't seen his son in thirty years. Nothing said about his ex wife. Thinking we still had time to visit him again, we went on with our lives. One sunday, we decided we would see him after church. However, my store employee texted me and said he couldn't man the store, so I had to go in instead. I told Andrea we would go visit Mark after I closed the store. While at the store another friend stopped by and told me not to bother to visit Mark as he had passed away a couple days prior. I was pretty upset at how fast he went. What bothered me most, was that it was like he wanted to die. I personally still love my life very much and will do what ever it takes to keep on living, barring a life of total agony. It's been several weeks now since his passing and as far as we are aware there has been no announcement in the paper of Mark's death or any kind of funeral arrangements. I don't believe any family have come down to Roswell. Mark has no family here in Roswell. It is very sad that this man will pass into oblivion with out a single recognition of his life or even existence. Mark was a christian and perhaps he fully believed in the scripture written by the apostle Paul, that says "absence from the body is presence with the Lord" Now I do believe when I die I will be in heaven, but at this point in my life, I'm not anxious to get there. There IS something to be said for the idea of self preservation. There is an inborn instinct in every living creature to want to stay alive. At what point does that desire cease to be. I've been through a lot in my life and a couple times I have wondered if it was really worth it. But at no time did I ever just give up or want to die. So in short, I leave a small memorial to Mark Hagenue. A nice Guy who left this earth too soon.