The title of this edition comes from the subject himself—Thomas Botzler, whose confrontation with death has lent his languaging a stark directness and impact.
“Gravitas” is a word that comes to mind, evoking “graveness” and “weight.” And yet Thomas carries his own tired body with a certain lightness of being. Death has enlightened him.
Thomas has fourth stage (metastatic; spreading) cancer. While stage four cancer is not necessarily terminal, the continued growth of his cancer in treatment and narrowing options have caused Thomas to treat his own cancer as life-ending. This is not an uncommon story. Sixty-five hundred people in the three counties in which this article will be printed are (knowingly or unknowingly) in the last year of their life. Twenty percent of them (one in five of us) will die from cancer…