Alex Trebek

I was watching TV Sunday morning when I received the news alert on my phone that stopped everything.

Alex Trebek had passed away. 

At 80 years old and fighting stage 4 pancreatic cancer, the news should not have been a surprise but I was nonetheless stunned.

It was a year and a half ago that the Jeopardy host announced his diagnosis. The conventional wisdom regarding stage 4 pancreatic cancer is that it is a death sentence. There is no cure, no getting better; the best one could hope for was to delay the inevitable. 

Alex Trebek, continuing to host Jeopardy while undergoing treatments for his cancer, faced his fragile and mortal state with such professionalism and good humor, it was easy to forget the inevitable conclusion of his fight. 

The news of Alex Trebek's passing was a cold and brutal reminder of that inevitability. 

For many years, I considered Jeopardy as background noise, something watched by old people. My own inevitable evolution into an old person led me to watch Jeopardy more frequently but I was not what one would call a loyal viewer until the spring of 2019 when two things happened. 

Contestant James Holzhauer captivated a nation with his dominant winning streak. My wife Andrea became obsessed with following Jeopardy James' run of games and I came to share her obsession with this remarkably gifted player.

The other thing that happened was Alex Trebek's revelation of his diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Suddenly, the concept of Alex Trebek as always being there on the set of Jeopardy was thrown into doubt. Jeopardy moved in my mind from background noise to something more precious; each day with Alex Trebek still on the job became a gift. 

Trebek's wit and professionalism were no longer taken for granted; I began to fully appreciate just how amazingly good Alex Trebek was at hosting Jeopardy.  

As I read more about him and saw him in interviews, I also began to fully appreciate just how amazingly good Alex Trebek was at life.  

Starting down the dark maul of death as cancer painfully ravaged his body, Alex Trebek considered himself lucky, fully appreciative of his good fortune of a successful career and a loving wife and family. 

He did not deny the hurt of his disease. He admitted to the pain and the despair from both the cancer and from the chemotherapy. But the pain from the disease and the treatment was not his story. The pain could only point to his story's end. But Alex Trebek's story was about all he had experienced his his life before the story ended. His story was about learning, exploration and helping others. 

Alex Trebek was a good man with an uncanny wisdom about who he was and his place in the world. 

It is with sorrow to accept the news of his passing.

It is with joy to know of this man and his time among us.