The question never answered
E had the Kansas-Missouri game on last night, and on the screen I saw Mark Mangino, the KU coach, who did not look like a well man. A little research tells me that he is 51 years old, born 5 years after A.
It was a cold day in Kansas City, and you could see everyone’s breath in the air. But as I watched him on the screen, he was sweating profusely, and looked uncomfortable. He looked like a heart attack waiting to happen. This man must weigh 400 lbs.
I look at someone so obviously unhealthy, and I wonder again how it is that my A, slender and strong, despite his complaints about the gut that arrived along with middle age (I don’t know what he was talking about), with no obvious signs of poor health, is gone, and this man is here. It’s not that I wish to make a trade, or that I wish Mark Mangino dead. Not at all. And I fear for him—he may not make to 55. But I just don’t understand it.
It is evidence such as this that makes me think it truly was genetics that doomed my sweetheart. Or maybe genetics and a cosmic plan beyond my comprehension. But I cannot account for it any other way as I see people smoking and drinking and overeating their way into an old age denied my boy, who did none of those things.
Knowing that doesn’t make losing him any easier, though I feel it exonerates all of us, including him, for not preventing it, because I don’t know that we could have. And that’s something. It evaporates a lot of the anger I’ve felt on and off for him not taking better care of himself and for me not being more aware. Less guilt is always a blessing. But I wish his genes would’ve had other plans for him. I sure did.