A Full Life

I have watched as this physicist, scientific journalist, translator, and writer’s understanding of the world has shrunk further and further.

 

At 70 years old, he has had a full life, with two children, three grandchildren, playing tennis, learning guitar, working for the National Institute of Public Health, the Secretary of Education, the Electrical Research Institute. His degree was in Physics, but his work was always in communications. He founded, wrote, and edited publications for all of those organizations, and even wrote speeches for the technical director of the Secretary of Public Education. I remember when I first met him, before I even knew much about Mexico, he read a speech that he had just finished about the future of education in Mexico. It was so inspiring and so well written that it made me cry.

I think his proudest professional accomplishment was founding and editing the health magazine for youth called Mochate. It was distributed for free to tens of thousands of school children all across Mexico and dealt with issues such as drugs, mental health, physical health and sex education. 

He was also a translator of mathematics and physics textbooks for 30 years. In all, he translated 46 college textbooks on subjects such as physics, electronics, mathematics and even finances and business.  

  His most recent fascination before his mental deficit made it too difficult to discuss it was the stars. He used to say with amazement, “We are made of the same things as the stars.” In fact, he wrote an article for the scientific journal of the prestigious Autonomous University of Mexico’s journal, ¿Cómo ves?.   Interestingly, six months ago, after he had already lost most of his conversational abilities, as we were sitting in the psychiatrist’s waiting room, he looked out over the valley and said excitedly, “We are the third.” I looked at him questioningly and he said, “There’s the big one, then one, two, three. We are three.” I thought about that for a few minutes, and then googled the planets. I had no idea the order of the planets from sun. I discovered we are indeed the third.      If you’re curious about more details, here is Gabriel’s the last resume.