Only the Good Die Young

On Thursday, while I was still in Maine I got an email from my friend Mike Mansuy. We went to college together. He started reading my blog regularly some years back and we reconnected since we have a lot of the same beliefs. In college he was about the nicest person in my class a class full of a lot of really nice people. As a point of reference I was one of the least nice.

This email was not one I wanted. He was letting everyone know that after nine months of fighting cancer he was calling in Hospice. Mike lives in California and retired a few years back as a high school principal, where he was well loved. He has a wife and grown daughter he loved more than anything. He spent the last few years in retirement working out so he could live a healthy long life and fishing, because he loved fishing. So this news at only 65 this was not good.

I was hoping he was going to fail hospice. It has happened. I wanted him to have many more days with his people. He was the only son of a family with six daughters. That made him especially nice to girls.

We drove home from Maine and Sunday I was sick in bed. Nothing serious, but I slept a lot. I had just learned from another college friend that he has gotten a cancer diagnosis. The news came out late Sunday and I did not see it until today that Mike Mansuy had passed away. So unfair that such a good human, a kind human, a sweet human is taken and we are left with some awful humans still walking around.

I have lost a good number of friends my age in the last few years. All have been really good people. The really nice ones. The most beloved ones. Nothing is promised. I am not saying people should become bad, but the way it is looking around me, the good ones are taken too early. Billy Joel sang it, “Only the good die young.”