That’s right. Sadly, we lost my wife’s father, Teo, on one of the first days of the new year.
Death can be an instructive and helpful lens through which we can contemplate and understand our lives. I’ll share a few thoughts on him and his unexpected (but terribly predictable) passing.
As I said, it was a “died suddenly” — he passed away silently on a tram on his way to the hospital for a check-up. I do suspect that the mRNA COVID vaccine and the booster shots he took had something to do with it but we long expected his demise because of the way he lived. With the exception of smoking, he did everything you SHOULDN’T do if you wanted to live a long, healthy life. To mention just one thing — he was a diabetic yet he had a beer for breakfast almost every morning (a breakfast beer is not such an abnormal way for old Bulgarian men to greet the day.) He had an adverse cardiac event that landed him in the hospital about six months ago; which we hoped would motivate him to cut back on the booze, get some exercise, or clean up his diet a bit — it did not. Over the years that I’ve known him as his health declined, he was almost totally disinterested in all the anti-aging supplements I had and the Biohacking stuff my wife and I were into. This New Year’s Eve, he turned down the N-Acetyl Cysteine that I offered him as a hangover hack.
I first got into Biohacking and Nootropics because I wanted to be like the guy in Limitless on NZT-48. I wanted to work smarter, make more money, and upgrade my verbal agility so I could enrapture whoever I chose. Similar motivations probably inspired your interest in the first place. BUT having known Teo and his surviving wife, both stubborn non-Biohackers, I can see that the exorbitant cost of being cavalier about life and not implementing a pragmatic full-spectrum antifragility philosophy is years or decades of suffering — misery not kept to oneself. It makes me thankful to have been given a greater degree of personal agency; having born in a free country at the cusp of an age of enlightenment, instead of in a communist hellhole still reeling from the trauma of the second world war!
While he had his flaws, I’ve always believed that one of the surest ways to judge somebody is by the children they raise to adulthood. And his daughter is one of the finest people I’ve ever met. Even early on in our relationship (before I had the chance to imbue her with some of my values) there was a profound decency to her along with inquisitiveness, thoughtful empathy, rationality, and common sense that made her stand out to me.
I’ll remember Teo for his hospitality. When we first met, he gave me a hardy handshake and served me an epic Balkan barbecue which we enjoyed al fresco next to his blooming garden. A little later, I was brought in from the cold (literally and figuratively) into his household for Christmas of 2017. And finally, I’ll remember him joking with his daughter and being a bit silly; pretending to be an orchestral conductor while we feasted and imbibed watching the beautiful Vienna philharmonic orchestral performance on television on New Year’s Day.
Rest in peace Teo!
