Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

I am sadder than sad about this news. We were just discussing research that indicated a connection between a layoff when someone’s over forty and a higher than usual rate of death. Carl Remick, LBO list member, who was there at the birth of the list, died and did so while dealing with a health insurance provider that was bound and determined to impoverish the guy to get out of paying. I loved that guy and looked forward to meeting him next time I visited NYC. He was a curmudgeon at times, but he was right there, cheering us on, when, like him, we found ourselves having to freelance in order to survive. He volunteered to go over our web site with a fine toothed comb, giving me invaluable advice that was the product of years in the belly of the beast, writing marketing and PR copy on Madison Ave. High praise from Carl, a wordsmith if there ever was, meant more to me than I was ever able to convey to him.

FUCKETTY FUCK FUCK FUCK!

This is the post Carl wrote, one of his last, back in September 2007:

I owe you an apology, andie. My previous email was intemperate and insulting. I do not believe that you are complacent or insensitive person but are keenly aware of and concerned about today’s social problems and have valuable specialized training and experience, as well as expressive ability, that make your posts a unique and highly substantive contribution to the list. No fooling.

I am just feeling touchy these days, and as I view the shambles of US society around me — with the latest lurch in our downward trajectory marked by the growing instability of the financial system — I’m easily inflamed by any suggestion that today’s richly remunerated oligarchic “meritocracy” has done anything but act with poor insight and gross incompetence in leading the nation. And yes, I think the concept of bourgeoisie liberalism is too enervated to support the degree of social change needed for humankind to escape the death grip of capitalism.

I sometimes think that I appear like a sign-waving crank in posts insisting on a more egalitarian, deeply socialistic future. But that is certainly my key personal message to the world, and I feel an increasing need to be blunt in stating that message because I do not know how long I will have the opportunity to express it.

I will frankly admit that I feel overwrought very often these days. With some reluctance, I would like to share some personal details about my life over the past few years. I’d mentioned to Doug offlist some time ago that I did not intend to post this info to the list because in essence it seemed too whiny and, well, personal. But what the hell, just to tell you where I coming from:

* Early in 2001 I got laid off from my staff PR writer position of many years. ‘01 was a poor year to do job-seeking, and age 51 was a poor age to find a new staff position. After many months it dawned on me that another staff job was never to be. So I became a freelance writer, which calls for entrepreneurial skills of which I have zip, resulting in deep economic anxiety being the household norm this decade. And to think that the whole reason I became a corporate writer is that I figured it would offer the greatest job security for a writer. Joke’s on me!

* The real kick in the teeth came at the beginning of this year. A nagging shoulder pain that I’d ignored for months, assuming it was a routine rotator cuff problem, was diagnosed as a dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma, cancer arising in cartilage tissue that has a 5-year survival rate of 10 percent. Ouch. Since then my life has been a festival of surgery, radiation and chemo (and no earned income). The surgery left me with a basically useless left arm — which puts the kibosh on the two-handed keyboard writing I used to do and makes even writing emails a long agonizing process. Radiation was a breeze, but chemo should be prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. The drugs I’m taking — cisplatin and doxorbicin — are supposed to be unusually emetic, and I can vouch that these drugs (rare for pharmaceuticals) really live up to their billing. I’ve felt too sick even to complete applying for Social Security disability, a key item on my things-to-do list.

So most of the time I feel like shit, physically and mentally. Waking up at 4 a.m., nauseous, pondering poor career choices, wasted travel opportunities, time squandered on corporate trivialities, is a hellish experience. Knowing that I can no longer do gardening, swimming and many other treasured activities causes sorrow I can’t describe. I’d looked forward to many years of retirement with my wife — the anguish I feel about that is unbearable.

And now suddenly, I get the feeling that my health insurer is trying to shake me off (which wouldn’t surprise me — my claims-paid statements for this year comprise a file an inch thick). Just yesterday — prior to sending my incendiary lbo post — I got a letter from my insurer asking for submission of my last year’s Form 1040 Schedule C. So if worse comes to worse, I certainly don’t want to linger for months with no health insurance, living in a high-tax house in a frozen real estate market, burning through savings to cover medical costs.

I must say, living in the shadow of impoverishment and death has been a big surprise to me. When it comes to winning prizes for complacency, andie, I must say that I myself deserve the blue ribbon.

Apologies again for my nasty lbo post. I confess there was a lot of envy in what I wrote. In particular I envied your trip to Italy — something that I’d always assumed I would do with my wife someday and that now seems problematic.

Well, sorry for the melodrama, folks. This whole experience has left me sadder but, unfortunately, not wiser. But I will advise y’all to carpe diem before it’s too late.

Carl