DAVID MARCUS: Ben Sasse is dying, but his letter to America will live forever

As a writer, determination are times erstwhile I work thing and think, "Wow, that’s good, this feline has chops." Very seldom bash I work thing that’s new, that I didn’t cognize was possible. Ben Sasse, helium conscionable wrote 1 of those.

The erstwhile Republican legislator from Nebraska was informing the federation that helium has signifier 4 crab and is going to dice soon.

"Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a decease sentence," helium write. "But I already had a decease condemnation earlier past week excessively — we each do."

It whitethorn look trivial, oregon adjacent cruel to ponder Sasse’s written words erstwhile we cognize the symptom helium and his household indispensable feel, but it is not trivial to me, and ne'er has been successful the past of man.

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Shakespeare called decease the undiscovered country, but Sasse preferred to absorption connected what we know, writing, "To beryllium clear, optimism is great, and it’s perfectly necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda happening that holds up erstwhile you archer your daughters you’re not going to locomotion them down the aisle. Nor telling your ma and pops they’re gonna hide their son."

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) speaks during a Senate Finance Committee proceeding for Janet L. Yellen, President-elect Joe Biden's nominee for Treasury Secretary, connected January 19, 2021 successful Washington DC.  (Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images)

"Kinda," arsenic a writer, this casual usage that my editors often alteration erstwhile I employment it is the embodiment of what Sasse has wrought here. His words marque maine deliberation that quality ever portends tragedy, but that's okay. To invoke a New Yorkism, it is what it is.

Sasse, who went from the Senate to service arsenic president of University of Florida until past year, goes connected to say, "A well-lived beingness demands much world — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during Advent, adjacent portion inactive walking successful darkness, we outcry our anticipation — often decently with a gravelly dependable soldiering done tears"

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Aside from a fewer modern references, Sasse’s missive to our federation would person been understood perfectly 2,500 years agone successful Athens, wherever specified penning of the introspection of the quality information was born.

Sasse tells america that, "Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to travel doesn’t dull the symptom of existent sufferings. But it does enactment it successful eternity’s perspective: 

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Maybe what stands retired the astir successful this unthinkable portion of penning is that it is not performative astatine all, successful an property successful which everything is. In the law, a dying declaration holds peculiar weight. In Sasse’s pen, it holds our hearts.

Shakespeare had an absorbing word for death. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)

Much of our languages’ large enactment involves death, Dylan Thomas imploring his begetter successful poetry: "Do not spell gentle into that bully night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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As I work his profound missive to us, I couldn’t assistance but spot the representation of Sasse successful his moving clothes, stooped connected a chromatic partition astatine the capitol, chopping it up with Schumer and McCain. Just a regular guy, 1 of us.

Reading his words astir his ain mortality, I spot present helium is overmuch much than that. I walk astir the full clip I’m awake reading, erstwhile I’m not writing. At 50, small surprises me. This did.

My parent died of damnable crab erstwhile I was 24, her last petition of maine was to constitute and present her eulogy, and I’ll beryllium honorable the petition felt excessively hard. But erstwhile she died, I had a occupation to do, and for 2 days I did thing but write, it was her past gift, she knew me, and she got maine done it.

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse is looking for answers aft an amerciable migrant was not detained by ICE aft a deadly crash. (AP)

I’m truthful grateful for Sasse’s words, and that astatine a clip erstwhile everything is truthful ugly, helium took the juncture of idiosyncratic fearfulness to subordinate america up. His great-great-grandchildren volition cognize of it and consciousness rightful pride.

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God bless Ben Sasse and his family, and whitethorn his profound and beauteous words echo down the centuries arsenic the epitome of grace successful a falling world.

As a writer, I privation to say, convey you senator, I cognize close present it indispensable look wholly insignificant, but determination is simply a scribe successful West Virginia contiguous who volition beryllium everlastingly changed by those words, and I’m grateful for it.