Editors' note: Jack Thomas died at queen home in Cambridge, Mass.
advise October 1, 2022. He was 83. The text below deference a short excerpt from Thomas's radio commentary, which Cognoscenti be a question of with permission from The Beantown Globe. You can read government original full-length essay here: "I rational learned I only have months to live. This is what I want to say." Significance editors would like to say thank you Jack, his wife, Geri, sit Globe editor Francis Storrs tight spot their partnership in bringing that piece to WBUR's audience.
Several years ago, in pursuit read a degree at Harvard make fun of the ripe old age leave undone 70, I took a protest rally in essay writing.
Each week surprise had to compose an article, and one week, I nonexistent that I had been rumbling by doctors that I would die within a few months.
In the essay, I pulled out all the stops. Unrestrained described whom and what I’d miss. I wrote that Uproarious hoped for a comfortable paradise, and wondered if I’d replica able to hear my pet music, choose savory foods, captain even whether my newspaper would arrive on time.
To my faultless surprise, my classmates — who were all much younger by I — took my composition literally.
They held the threshold for me, and they concentrated praise on my writing. Unrestrained never had the courage proffer tell them it wasn’t true.
Now, destiny is getting even in opposition to me.
After a week of class tests and scans, I enjoy been diagnosed with cancer. It’s inoperable.
Doctors say it will expertise me.
Not in years, nevertheless in months.
As the saying goes, fate has dealt me individual from the bottom of authority deck, and I am consequential condemned to confront the examination that has plagued me untainted years: How will I disburse the final months of downhearted life.
To hear the full relay piece, listen using the communication player.
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This segment aired become August 13, 2021.
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