We all knew him as Castaway Ray, the man who wrote
elegantly about life, obesity and many other
 things
on a couple of WLS groups. He was a heavyweight with a lot of health
problems including diabetes and kidney failure which would be cured, he
felt, by having weight loss surgery. Many doctors did not want to
operate on him because of the risks but he finally did find someone to do
the surgery on him. Unfortunately, he died within three weeks of his
surgery from complications.This is his letter to
his grandma just before his surgery:
Dear Nana
In giving birth to mom you also gave birth to me, already within her
almost
70 years to the day. February 6, 1962 brought a tiny little creature
into the
world. Nearly dead at birth, something sparked deep within the sickly
little
guy and progress was made. Heroic overfeeding quickly made the tiny
tot a
tubby terror, and the battle to make me thin again began. Everything
was tried,
from structured feeding to starvation, weight watchers, and really,
nothing
worked.
Dozens of years go by and fat is now the sickness, and the big man
is now
nearly dead again, in desparate need of heroic measures that no one in
the
world would provide. I live in a world spent feeling my strength being
stripped
away, tethered to life by torturous dialysis machines; the only escape
from
which is a loss of hundreds and hundreds of pounds. There is horror in
that
tethering however, life shrinks to an infinitessimal dot, much like
the TV sets of
old, where a murky horizon collapses into a tiny dot, slowly fading
into non
existence. It is a world without hope, without joy, without a sense of
future.
It is a barren existence at best, and as it pulls on your strength
and breath
and endurance, everyone around you pulls away with it.
Everyone that is, except you and mom. My champions, you always let
me know
that I was special, now ... if only I could remove the Wall Of Fat
around
me. That time has finally come, and I cannot find the words to thank
you for
loving me enough to lift this terrible curse from me and let me
finally LIVE. Two
hundred pounds from now, Ill be able to get a kidney, and three
hundred
pounds from now Ill be like James Cagney in White Heat ... TOP OF THE
WORLD MA, TOP
OF THE WORLD!!!!
To know that rapture, to finally feel the pure and simple joy of
JUST BEING
WHOLLY ALIVE, and to know that its now all GOING TO HAPPEN ... as of
Mar 16
2006 I am born again, the world is opened up again, that tiny white
dot is more
than the world, its the milky way ... and all of it is thanks to you
Love,
Ray
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I know that Ray does now feel that rapture he talked so
eloquently about!
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