Loving Life Is The Way. Leif Ramos (1972-2017).

My brother-in-law Leif suffered a heart attack ten years ago, and was given a bypass. His father had died of a heart attack. He followed a scrupulously correct vegetarian and exercise diet thereafter. However, he also had to be “off the grid” for mitigating interest on non-reimbursed student loans. In the USA, nowadays, student loans are never forgiven: the chains which hold the slaves down, are not made of metal anymore.

Whereas the colossal, multi-billion dollars debts of plutocrats such as Donald Trump, or any of the millions of California homeowners millionaires are readily forgiven, it is not the case for modest students without rich parents. Then  interests pile up and states “garnish” whatever income the ex-student, now a victim, may incur. Nice, keeps the low lives in check! This efficient, apparently neutral mechanism drives millions of US citizens into the underclass (precisely those who had the effrontery to want to learn something). If one’s parents belong to the .1%, student loans are a rounding error. For others, it’s a crushing burden. Indeed, the rest of the US can live in slavery: it fits them just right. For not revolting, and just swallowing all the lies served to them, as if they were delicious junk foods.

Leif paddling in his state of Alaska. Nature is the way, tempered by humanity.

Leif had a second heart attack December 1, 2017. Five stents were installed. His surgeon had to leave for a scheduled trip, but asked the hospital to keep him in hospitalized. However, Leif had no health insurance, thus the hospital, searching, as they all are, for higher profits, kicked him out, after the surgeon left for very far places, overseas (this was all happening in Anchorage, Alaska, travelling from there generally means long flights on the other side of an ocean, or two).

Leif did worse on December 30th. He apparently tried to drive himself to another, more hospitable, hospital, Alaska General. At 5am. He nearly made it.

He leaves behind a loving family, including his ailing mother, herself with her own heart trouble, now doubled.

Leif’s life was not easy, and made him suffer, in a number of inordinate ways, but it was worth having, he took it with a smile.  

***

Leif with aurora. His award-winning pictures are there to stay. So are his musical compositions.

Leif loved life. That sounds simple, but it’s not. Life is not the grid all too many others are forced to live on (thus perpetuating it in its sorry state). People know this more easily in Alaska and Hawai’i, some of those increasingly rare places on Earth where it is possible to stay in touch with nature. Leif’s love of life forced him, greatly from circumstances he didn’t control, to live off the grid. Loving life requires to go further than just being told what to do.

Who knows what to do correctly in life, who doesn’t love life?

One can’t tell all & sundry, life is absurd, or unlovable, then switch around, been good, well-meaning, giving.

One may not get back all the love one gives to life, but one has to: others will, that’s how humanity is. How humanity became possible.

Leif’s love of life is a mood worth caring forth. What better choice is there? Loving other creatures and the world they share, with us, is not just the best we can do. It’s the only thing humanity can do, and the most significant thing humanity, overall, has done and does. As long as we keep on sharing this way of having a world, Leif lives with us. Let’s live!

Patrice Aymé

Tags: Leif Ramos, Life