While Mom Was Dying, Scott Adams Suicided
Are we always surprised by the end?
Five weeks ago Mom called to say she was dying. Within days.
Three weeks later she was thrilled to explain that things were not quite so dire. The pain was less, her diagnosis incorrect.
A week after that the call was from an emergency room physician.
Despite flying to her side, I never heard a word from Mom again or sensed any response to my voice or touch. Her heart beat on beyond medical expectation, but in another four days she passed away.
Over that month, I had paid little attention to the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, to the debasing of democracy in Israel, or to the simple truth that more than 150,000 people die each day on our planet. All I could focus on, no matter how I tried, was the loss I felt.
One of the deaths I missed was the public suicide of a 1990’s favorite of mine: Scott Adams, comic writer of Dilbert.
Decades ago Scott Adams became the hero of the common man fighting self-serving management across the world. More accurately, his brainchild, Dilbert, had become the hero.
Dilbert cartoons were posted in office cubes everywhere as a sign of resistance. The Dilbert comic won syndication in newspapers across the…
