Death Be Not Proud

Johnny Gunther died well before I was born. He was seventeen when he died, after having spent more than a year fighting brain cancer. And I mean fighting. His was not an era that glorified giving in or giving up, much less getting on with your death so your friends and caretakers don't have to put up with your illness any more.

Even in such an era, Johnny stood out, because even toward the end his generous spirit touched those around him. He lifted people up, even as he fell.

His father, John Gunther, immortalized his son in a memoir called Death Be Not Proud. It's still in print, all these decades later.

I was a teenager when I first read the book, and I resented that anyone would write a story about a teenager who had faced such trouble - and lost. The future seemed too big, happiness too uncertain, life too daunting, without having to contend with the possibilities of debilitating disease and untimely death, too. It wasn't fair. (Did I mention that I was a teenager at the time?)

And yet I remember that I memorized a poem - a prayer - that Johnny wrote when he was ill, and for years it helped to see me through when things got tough. After all, nothing that I faced came close to what he and his friends and family had gone through.

I was trying to be a dutiful humanist at the time, so I modified the version that I put on my poster-infested, poem-plastered bedroom wall. But my heart knew the original: "Accept my gratitude/for all thy gifts/and I shall try/to fight the good fight/Amen."

Terri Schiavo died yesterday, after fighting the good fight. She joins Johnny Gunther, and Helen Keller, and all the others who have shown what folly it is to judge a life by the amount of good fortune that accompanies it.