What About Bob?

My former brother-in-law is brain-dead and, by now, they probably have pulled the plug on life-support.
Bob was married to Kathy, the eldest of my ex's two younger sisters. And he was only 55.
My ex came from a Grand Rapids, Mich., Dutch family. Her dad was career Army and chose Lafayette, Ind., to raise his family in the late 1950s. He taught ROTC at Purdue University as his last active duty military assignment.
The Dutch/Christian Reformed Church bunch are a pretty tightly knit cultural group. The more hard core among them go to Calvin College in Grand Rapids and marry within the group. So it was with Kathy, who went to Calvin for a year or two. I don't recall where she met Bob, but he ended up studying architecture at Purdue and Kathy became a registered nurse.
I was an outsider, marginally acceptable because I was raised Presbyterian, another variation on the Calvinist theological theme.
But Bob was the real deal - a straight-arrow Christian Reformed Dutch lad with a good attitude and a solid work ethic.
My ex never hid the fact that she wished I was more like Bob - more devoted to family and church and more interested in home improvement.
Anyhow, Bob got a job with a company that designs and builds parking structures - you know, the big parking garages where you get Severe Tire Damage if you try to sneak out the "in" ramp without paying.
The job paid well and he and Kathy raised their two daughters in a comfortable style, first in Grand Rapids, then Rockford, Ill., and later in suburban Atlanta, and most recently in St. Charles, Ill.
In the last year of my marriage, my wife and I spent a week with Kathy & Bob in a condo on Sanibel Island.
I always had a friendly, cordial relationship with Bob, but our interests and values were so wildly divergent that we had to struggle to keep a conversation going.
The last time I saw him was in March, 2001, at my son Steve's wedding. Bob was diagnosed with diabetes in his 20s or 30s and had controlled it with running and lots of other exercise.
So I was startled to see him looking decidedly paunchy. His youthful mop of hair was gone and he was balding. He'd also just had a heart attack.
I was up at my Amish brother-in-law's house Sunday when I checked my cell phone voicemail and found a message from Steve.
It seems that Bob's blood sugar got way out of whack in the middle of the night a few nights ago and he suffered a seizure, vomited and aspirated some barf. Kathy awoke to find him not breathing.
Steve said the medics lost him, then brought him back, but as of Sunday he had no brain activity and they were waiting for his parents to arrive from Michigan before they pulled the plug on life support.
I remember my ex predicting 15 years ago that Bob would die young because of his diabetes. She was right. Fifty-five is way too early to cash in.
Every time someone close to me dies, it's an occasion for self-examination and a reminder of how important it is not to waste the time we're given. My mother's death was that kind of a reminder and it gave me enough leverage on myself to bail out of a newspaper job that had stopped being fun. She died on Oct. 5, 2000, and I quit/took early retirement five days later on my first day back after the funeral.
I think the message I'm getting from Bob's death is to start taking my own diabetes more seriously.
So far, it's under control with medication, but the real solution is weight loss and this is a splendid time to revise my eating and exercise habits.
Godspeed, Bob.
And thanks for the reality check.