Godspeed, Dean Barnett

I've always enjoyed Dan Barnett's writing and commentary, whether at SoxBlog, the Weekly Standard, or guesting on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. I just heard that he passed away after a long fight against Cystic Fibrosis. He was clearly one of the good guys. To get a small sense of the man, read this excerpt from his pamphlet "The Plucky Smart Kid With The Fatal Disease: A Life With Cystic Fibrosis"

As I grew sicker, I had what for me was an extremely comforting insight. I came to view serious and progressive illness as an ever constricting circle with oneself at the center. The interior of the circle represents the contents of one’s life. As the circle gets smaller, things that were inside get forced out. Some of these things are dearly missed; others that were once thought precious get forced to the exterior and turn out to go surprisingly unlamented.

t the innermost point of the circle are the things that really matter: family, faith, love. These things stay with you until the day you die. At the very end, because the circle has shrunk down to its center, they’re all you have left. But as we approach that end, we finally realize that all along, they were what mattered most. As a consequence, life often remains beautiful and worthwhile right up until the end.

A quick reminder: we're all born with a fatal ailment - it's called life, and no one gets out alive at the end. So without getting overly schmaltzy or preachy, we'd all do well to spend more time on that "inner circle" than Barnett wrote about.

To see a list of tributes to the man at the Weekly Standard, click here.