On Monday, January 10, 2000, my brother, Oz Mozes, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. He was 33.
Less than three years earlier, Oz seemed to have everything going for him. A brilliant and very successful computer engineer, he was also a man in excellent athletic shape. Then, after fracturing a finger during a basketball game, he wondered why the finger was not returning to normal functioning. After several months, and after consulting several doctors, he was diagnosed with ALS, and learned in detail what was going to happen to him.
Over the next two years, the paralysis spread from the one finger to his entire arm, then to his other arm, then to his legs, and then to his throat and lungs.
Since he lived in Israel while I lived in the U.S., I saw Oz only rarely during the two and a half years since the diagnosis. But whenever I did see him, he was always smiling, always in good spirits. He never resorted to denial; he deliberately studied all he could about ALS, understood as much as possible what he could expect to happen, and discussed his disease with complete openness—never with bitterness or self-pity.
From my parents and others who saw him more frequently, I learned that he was always like that. No one ever heard him utter any complaint, and he always maintained a cheerful, benevolent attitude.
During his last year Oz was confined to a motorized wheel-chair, and during most of that year a full-time attendant cared for him. But he was determined to remain active and productive as long as he could. He obtained every sort of gadget to help him continue operating his computer, attached a loud-speaker to his wheelchair to allow him to speak audibly, and—with incredible support from his employers, Intel Corporation's development center in Haifa, Israel—stayed on in his job as an engineer and team leader. On January 3, just six hours before he was hospitalized and only one week before his death, he presided over a major design meeting.
Oz was also determined to keep getting as much pleasure as he could out of life. A life-long, passionate jazz fan, each summer he traveled 300 miles with friends to attend an annual week-long jazz festival. In August of 1999, his paralysis almost complete, he still managed to attend the festival.
His girlfriend, who had been living with him for several months before he became afflicted, stayed with him and helped him, until, in September of 1999, Oz decided that his condition imposed too great a burden on her. He firmly told her that he wanted her as a lover, not a nurse. At his insistence, she moved to an apartment of her own. They continued to see each other on an almost daily basis, and their relationship continued until the end.
Oz learned early on that there would probably come a time when connecting him to an artificial respirator would be the only way to save his life. Such a connection would be permanent, rendering him immobile and unable to talk—and, since his hands would also be paralyzed, barely able to communicate at all—for the brief remainder of his life. Oz made sure to inform his parents, and all the doctors he dealt with, that such a condition would be unacceptable to him: that he did not wish, under any circumstances, to be connected to an artificial respirator. During his hospitalization the doctors asked Oz several times whether he was still certain of his decision. Each time, he very firmly repeated his desire not to be connected to a respirator. The doctors respected his wishes.
In my mind, there is no stronger, more heroic example of rationality and benevolence in coping with misfortune, than the way Oz chose to deal with his disease. No person, real or fictional, exemplified better than Oz the meaning of Ayn Rand's line about pain that goes only down to a certain point and then stops.
Despite all the sadness, I know that, for the rest of my life, I will look on him as a great inspiration.