Leonard Nimoy, Oren Miller and the ties that bind

On September 11,  2003 John Ritter died.  On September 12, 2003 Johnny Cash died.   I enjoyed both of their works, Ritter for Three’s Company and Cash for his countless songs that I enjoyed.  It’s rare when two famous people that I admire or liked their work pass away with such sequence to each other.  It happened again recently when Leonard Nimoy and Oren Miller died.

Nimoy was of course best known for Spock in Star Trek.  Oren Miller was a blogger whose site A Blogger and a Father chronicled his life as a dad.  His life took a dramatic turn in May 2014 when he found out that he had stage 4 brain cancer and had less than a year to live on average.  He posted some details about his chemo treatments and how he was holding up as a dad, husband and guy.

While most everyone knew who Leonard Nimoy was not everyone knew who Oren Miller was.  Look on your Facebook feed right now, if you see a candle in the place where someone’s avatar usually is it’s likely that they knew Oren.  Oren was the original cat herder.

Dad bloggers are like cats.  We’re independent, seek council when it’s needed, like beer (or other drinks), love our partners and our children.  I don’t exactly know when it happened but Oren formed a group of dad bloggers.  He wrangled all these independent bloggers who were as difficult to group together as feral cats-and put us in a group.

That was a couple of years ago and since then the group has grown exponentially.  The groups rallied around Oren when his diagnosis was announced, raised money for him and announced a scholarship program in his name for the Dad 2.0 Summit.

I only met Oren once and that was in passing at the Dad 2.0 Summit in New Orleans.  He was low key, pleasant and very chill.  After that he wasn’t a friend by any stretch of the imagination, I saw his posts and updates; but his cancer diagnosis and passing impacted me.

Damn.  I had cancer and I’m older than him, was my immediate thought.  Then I thought about his young children, his wife and what they’re going through.  I thought about the utter randomness of cancer and how it can target certain parts of the body.  Then, I felt lucky, fortunate and thankful to be where I am today.

Oren was a husband and father, but also a blogger and a father, but he was the aforementioned first.  Sure he created the Facebook page where dad bloggers go to share, bond and gripe, but my thoughts are with his family now.  I’m thinking of the myriads of other people that suffer premature losses, how life dealt them the short straw and how those that may be thankless, mean or seemingly without merit  seem to occupy so much space.

Huffington Post, Today and other media outlets wrote about Oren’s passing.  It’s tragic, too young and is a reminder to be thankful, loving and appreciative of the time that we have here with our loved ones.  When you see the candle in your Facebook feed or #Dads4Oren on twitter remember the story.  It’s about a dad who loved, whose family is grieving and a reminder for us all to know that we’re only here for a temporary assignment.

I don’t know if Oren was a Star Trek fan.  If there’s an afterlife; I hope he and Leonard are having a good laugh, listening to Johnny Cash and keeping a close eye on the ones that they loved.