It was something announced and we knew that sooner or later it had to happen, but nobody wanted to have to know the news of the death of the neurologist and writer Oliver sacks. A few months ago the popular writer announced in public that a melanoma in his eye had spread to the liver, which was in the terminal phase.
Today, Sunday, at 82 years of age, this true genius has gone forever, who in addition to being a renowned neurologist had become tremendously popular for books such as The man who mistook his wife for a hat.
This book has been translated into dozens of different languages and has sold tens of thousands of copies around the world. In it Sacks uses some of his clinical cases to reflect on consciousness and the human condition. Another of his most famous books, Awakenings, was brought to the big screen starring two great actors like Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
«A month ago I was in good health, even frankly well. At 81, I was still swimming a mile every day. But my luck had a limit: shortly after I found out that I have multiple metastases in the liver«
This was the farewell (you can read it in full at the end of the article) of the popular writer when he discovered the metastasis of his cancer that finally and unfortunately for all has ended his life.
Rest in peace the genius named Oliver Sacks.
Of my own life
A month ago I was in good health, even frankly good. At 81, I was still swimming a mile every day. But my luck had a limit: shortly after I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago a rare tumor, an ocular melanoma, was discovered in my eye. Although the radiation and laser treatment I underwent to remove it eventually blinded me in that eye, it is very rare for this type of tumor to reproduce. Well, I belong to the unfortunate 2%.
I am thankful that I have enjoyed nine years of good health and productivity since the initial diagnosis, but the time has come to face death up close. Metastases occupy a third of my liver, and although their progression can be delayed, they are a type of cancer that cannot be stopped. So I must decide how to live the months I have left. I have to live them in the richest, most intense and productive way that I can. I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, learning that he was mortally ill, at the age of 65, wrote a short autobiography, on a single day in April 1776. He titled it From my own life .
"I imagine rapid deterioration," he wrote. “My disorder has caused me very little pain; and, what is even rarer, despite my great deterioration, my spirits have not faltered for an instant. I have the same passion as always for studying and I enjoy the company of others ”.
I have had the immense luck to live beyond 80 years, and those 15 years longer than those that Hume lived have been as rich in work as in love. In that time I have published five books and completed an autobiography (considerably longer than Hume's short pages) to be published this spring; and I have a few more books almost finished.
Hume continued: "I am ... a man of docile temperament, of controlled temper, of open, sociable and cheerful character, capable of feeling affection but little given to hatred, and of great moderation in all my passions."
In this respect I am different from Hume. Although I have had love relationships and friends, and I have no real enemies, I cannot say (nor could anyone who knows me) that I am a man of docile temperament. On the contrary, I am a fiery person, with violent enthusiasms and a complete lack of restraint in all my passions.
However, there is a phrase in Hume's essay with which I especially agree: "It is difficult," he wrote, "to feel more detached from life than I do now."
In recent days I have been able to see my life as if I were observing it from a great height, as a kind of landscape, and with an increasingly profound perception of the relationship between all its parts. However, this does not mean that it is finished.
On the contrary, I feel incredibly alive, and I wish and hope, in the time I have left, to strengthen my friendships, say goodbye to the people I love, write more, travel if I am strong enough, acquire new levels of understanding and knowledge. .
That means I will have to be bold, clear and direct, and try to settle my accounts with the world. But I will also have time to have fun (and even to be silly).
Suddenly I feel centered and clairvoyant. I don't have time for anything superfluous. I must prioritize my work, my friends and myself. I'm going to stop watching the television newscast every night. I'm going to stop paying attention to the politics and debates about global warming.
It is not indifference but detachment; I am still very concerned about the Middle East, global warming, growing inequalities, but they are no longer my concern; they are a thing of the future. I'm glad when I meet talented young people, even the one who biopsied me and diagnosed my metastases. I have a feeling that the future is in good hands.
I have become more and more aware, for about 10 years, of the deaths that occur among my contemporaries. My generation is already on its way out, and each death I have felt as a detachment, a tear on the part of myself. When we have disappeared there will be no one like us, but of course there is never anyone equal to others. When a person dies, it is impossible to replace him. It leaves a hole that cannot be filled, because the destiny of every human being - the genetic and neural destiny - is to be a unique individual, to trace their own path, to live their own life, to die their own death.
I can't pretend that I'm not afraid. But the feeling that predominates in me is gratitude. I have loved and I have been loved; I have received a lot and have given something in return; I have read, and traveled, and thought, and written. I have had a relationship with the world, the special relationship of writers and readers.
And above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal on this beautiful planet, and that, by itself, has been an enormous privilege and an adventure.