Just saw the notices on Twitter and Facebook about the passing of a much-beloved tech guy -- Blake Krikorian. He was 48 and died while surfing. Sounds like a heart attack.
I've found it's impossible when hearing of someone dying, no matter how close they were to me, to experience it in any way other than how it relates to me. When my grandmother died it was the realization that I'd never see her again. When my uncle died, it was how close in age he was to me, and of course that a lifelong friend was gone forever. (I am now older than he was when he died.)
I was 47 when I had bypass surgery. My feeling on coming home from the hospital was that I was in a dead man's house. I decided at that point that the best way to digest the incredible events that had just happened was to act as if I had died, and I was watching the world as it existed after my passing.
The realization as I watch the tech industry digest the passing of this very young man is how true that premonition was. To the extent I am part of the tech industry now, it is as a memory, as if I really did die in 2002. I get that feeling from people I occasionally hear from. They have memories of me, but no knowledge of who I am, what I am doing, today.
Anyway if you can actually hear me, and you were a friend of Krikorian's, I feel for your loss. I am experiencing it in a personal way, the same way I would if we had been close, as the idea bounces off me. Death for such a young person with so much promise is a wake-up call for everyone who hears of it. Tick tock. The grim reaper waits for us all.