Today, we laid my brother to rest.

My brother prided himself on being a black swan:
+ The cancer wasn't supposed to be detected so early with no symptoms.
+ The cancer on his liver wasn't supposed to go away.
+ He wasn't supposed to live 19 months, much less 4 1/2 years.
+ He wasn't supposed to survive a blood clot in his leg that nearly reached his heart.
+ He wasn't supposed to make it out of the ICU when he had double pneumonia.

He wasn't supposed to do many things, but he did.

The following excerpt from a Malcolm Gladwell column in the New Yorker about Nassim Taleb, author of the book Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, was found in his planner:

"...because once you have been a black swan -- not just seen one, but lived and faced death as one -- it becomes easier to imagine another on the horizon."

Tagged: mark