I really don’t know what to say. Life dealt Belghast twin blows; his wife passed away suddenly a year ago, and then followed that up with a diagnosis for cancer.
And through all of it, Belghast wrote about these most terrible things, and did so with such understanding and depth that I felt his strength and compassion was a bottomless well. That I only hoped I could face that kind of hardship with such grace.
There are people in this world that are steady, dependable, an island in a stormy ocean. Someone who just seemed to have enough love and compassion for people they have never met; always a kind word, always looking for something more he could do, some better way he could help. He gave so much.
It’d been clear from his recent posts that chemotherapy was not going well; the lows were lower, the highs not high enough. Still, he wrote. He was so strong.
The first post I could find on his Tales of the Aggronaut blog ended with the words “Life is Good“.
When Belghast was with us, life was good, because he was in it.
I am at a complete loss. He has been through so much recently, with his wife passing suddenly and then with his own cancer diagnosis, and yet he kept on with his stuff, gaming, blogging, the weekly podcast. You could imagine that he was pulling through, that things were going to get better.
Chemo is such a risk. I only had it after I’d had my cancer removed, as a precautionary measure against recurrence, and it was the chemo that nearly killed me with a pulmonary embolism. Belghast didn’t really have a choice, though. He had to have the chemo to get him into a condition where he could have the cancer removed. And the only reason I know any of that is because he blogged about the whole thing in his trademark, straightforward, pragmatic style the whole time it was happening.
He was a consummate blogger and a lovely person. We’re all going to miss him a lot.
Well…. damn. As I recall it, I started reading his blog long enough ago that he was writing about his escapades in EQ2. He was my guild leader in FFXIV for most of the time I played that game too, and was always fun to chat with whenever we were both in-game.
That just sucks. :'(
I’m sad.