We lost a good man and a good friend last week. He was brilliant, funny, caring and loving and only 57 years old. One of the most painful parts of losing him was seeing the agony on the faces of everyone else who loved him and knowing that we'll never again see his sweet face or hear his rumbling laugh. He was a big man, and his passing leaves a big hole in our lives. The very worst part of his dying, however, was that it was so preventable. 

I said he was a big man. He was big physically as well as figuratively, and Type II diabetes had insinuated itself into his life and ultimately led to his death. It's the familiar  story of not enough exercise, too much food and loads of stress. Walking once a week is not enough. That's all he would attempt, and even that became difficult in the last couple of years. Ironically, he never did drugs, not even alcohol. He thought it made him lose control of his intellect. Food was always his comfort drug of choice, but food can be just as addictive and dangerous.

At first, when he found out he had diabetes, he lost weight and tried to exercise, but I think the stress of his job finally got to him. He didn't want to be where he was. He was a thinker, a philosopher. He wanted to teach, but his father's death threw him into a world of chaos: spreadsheets, employee relations, projections and the bottom line. So he gave up. He didn't watch what he ate and tested his blood sugar just enough to see if he could eat that piece of cake or ice cream sundae after all. He gained weight and began the slow spiral downward that led to kidney problems and finally congestive heart failure and cardiac arrest. Our big hearted friend's big heart stopped, and our hearts are broken. 

Our sweet philosopher became a statistic, a cautionary tale, one we see too often here in Tennessee. It didn't have to end like this.