Commentary: A Few Reminders That Charles Krauthammer's Death Brings

1. Death doesn't discriminate. In the case of Dr. Charles Krauthammer (ז׳ל), death did not care that he was a psychiatrist and a prominent commentator. It also did not care that he'd endured quite enough in his life, being (as, as I should know that, each Jew is at least once in his or her lifetime) a victim of Anti Semitism and of an accident that left him with Quadriplegia during his college days and thereafter for the rest of his 68 years.
2. Like death itself, disabilities and illnesses will not discriminate. Quadriplegia did not care that Charles Krauthammer had significant aspirations and quite a life ahead of him, and Abdominal Cancer did not spare the same Dr. Krauthammer whom Quadriplegia had already afflicted—and by the way, I as a person with Spastic-Diplegic Cerebral Palsy can at least somewhat imagine how frightening lying on a deathbed due to cancer must've been to a person whom already had paralysis below the neck and became increasingly paralyzed as cancer weakened him (and I'd be surprised if it wasn't frightening at times).
3. Death, disabilities, and illnesses don't care how old anybody is, and only Yehovah (ב׳ﬣ) knows why people like Dr. Krauthammer didn't get even 70 years, let alone 80 by any reason of any kind of strength—since physical strength isn't the only kind of strength that can help a person reach at least 70-80 years, and even as much as 120 years.
4. Only Yehovah (ב׳ﬣ) knows why He foreordained that people like Dr. Krauthammer didn't and won't get 70 years, much less why some people won't live even too long after they are born, if they're even born at all. Only Yehovah (ב׳ﬣ) also knows why He foreordained that some people would go through suffering after suffering after being born, if they weren't foreordained to be miscarried or stillborn in the first place, and many people who have gone through suffering after suffering throughout history did wish that they themselves had never been born or lived too long after their births—and Job and the prophet Jeremiah were among those people, and I'm sure that Dr. Krauthammer (who was as human as everyone else) was among those people at one or another point in his life (as I've been quite a few times in my own life given my own circumstances).
5. There unfortunately are evil people whom are rejoicing in the death of Dr. Krauthammer, as there are always evil people rejoicing in others' heartbreaking deaths. Some of these people are probably also rejoicing as Senator McCain is dying of the kind of cancer which afflicts him, and some of them have likely even rejoiced in loved ones' deaths. These kinds of people have no regard for others' lives, much less any humble regard for their own, or else they would acknowledge that they as much as anyone else will have their own moments in which they have to face Yehovah and account for how they lived their lives.
6. When the news cycle moves on from Dr. Krauthammer's death, his loved ones aren't going to move on with it. Especially given that he endured having Abdominal Cancer that metastasized and certainly exacerbated his Quadriplegia in his final days, his loved ones' mourning may well go beyond the shloshim  (30-day) and the overall avelut (year of mourning) periods in which the news cycle will appear to have left them behind.  After all, any family members, friends, and others who've lost a beloved person don't measure or schedule their grief or mourning by how much news coverage or how many days in the news cycle that their beloved one's death gets, even after the newspapers, television networks, and online news pages seem to forget that the decedent in question even existed.

A Modified Copied-and-Pasted Facebook Post On Aging

(And no, you don't have to copy and paste. I'm just modifying this a little as I copy and paste it because it's an albe-painful reminder that those of us under 35 are getting older, too).

To everyone whom has come of age and is only aging more and more every day:

We are going through the next stage of our lives. We are at ages at which we see more and more wrinkles, gray hair, and extra pounds. We think about the fact that quite a few of us were just even 25 seemingly yesterday, and just slightly younger than that just as if it were only a few days before that. Now we're either closer to 35 or further away from 35 on the older side of it than we ever thought that we could be in just a short amount of time, and the 25-and-younger crowd will be just like us one day (😢. You do get that old before you know it, and the worst part is getting old as you get older.).

What we once brought to the table with whatever youth and zest for life we had will become either wisdom, experience, and good hearts that older people are expected to have or the haughtiness, stubbornness, and miserliness of the proverbial old fool—"Better is a poor, wise youth than a foolish old king." We've earned each of our gray hairs for either what we've endured or made others endure, too.

Don't think that aging necessarily means being like a classic or like a fine wine, either. Our exteriors may not be what they once were, and any looks that we do retain will either mean nothing or be like the proverbial "gold ring in a pig's snout" if we deliberately forego having (let alone increasing) spirit, courage and strength in entering and exiting the coming chapters of our lives with grace and dignity; and may we never pride ourselves in what we've endured and accomplished—may we be humbled by and learn from it.

May God "[t]each us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom"—especially since we don't know if we have the rest of today, let alone tomorrow and any days thereafter.

Even if you decide to not copy, paste, and modify this with your age and a picture of you, look at the recent-enough picture that I have posted of my currently-28-years-old self and apply Marley's words to Scrooge to how you yourself are aging:

"Look to me no more. Look, that you may remember what has passed."