Richard has made a poignant description of finishing up his last experiments in a biology laboratory before moving on to something completely different.

The comment thread evolved into something along the lines of: if you think that feels strange, imagine learning with no advance notice whatsoever that your job has been terminated! And consensus opinion is that it would be quite a shock indeed. Of course that is true. But I’ve come to offer some sober perspective, because it has been on my mind lately.

My postdoc recently had minor problems with her pregnancy, so her doctor made her stop working three weeks earlier than she thought she was going to begin her maternity leave. She was unprepared. It happens to many of us. She managed to prioritize urgencies in the few days’ notice she had, and we are of course making do without her now. A few things like “where are the primers?” and “how about those aliquots of serum” have had the rest of us scrounging around, building up frost in the freezer, but overall it could have been worse.

Much worse.

A year and a half ago, a colleague and (I believe she wouldn’t have minded my writing) friend of mine died of breast cancer. Not a close friend, as we were collaborating across the Atlantic. But Marcy was such a friendly and warm personality that she was widely appreciated for both her collegial and intellectual qualities. Marcy had been fighting off this cancer for a couple of years; she took a little time out in the middle during the first round of treatment, and once in remission had to balance the time she wanted to spend with her family, the time taking care of her body, and the time she wanted to devote to her work. When the cancer recurred, she found the successors to her own research grants as well as the ones she was reviewing. She went clothes shopping with her daughter. Marcy wanted to live! So she found herself doing everything in double during that time – making plans for the future, organizing submissions to conferences and journals, continuing to be an expert reviewer for other people’s grant applications – and envisaging and preparing for the worst. I do not know when she heard it, but I wonder if I would know how to choose what was important, even if (perhaps especially if) I had time in which to prepare for a possible departure.

Last summer, another (closer) friend and colleague, equally collegial and brilliant, died quite suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. Here the issue is more, if it happened to you, could someone carry on the things that matter to you? Of course everyone just has to make do, but it is differently brutal.

My brother on a visit last autumn left a delightful small book that Randy Pausch wrote to extend his Last Lecture into a written legacy for his children and anyone else who wanted it. This is the spirit of generosity. I would recommend it. Randy saved many of us a lot of effort – we can just bookmark the bits and pieces that are particularly relevant from our own lives, just in case. Would my friends, if there were a sudden death in my future, know me well enough and also be inclined to write the final Acknowledgements section on my behalf? I find that just wonderful. Too bad for the lost plasmid stocks and primers and cryptic paraffin blocks. Toss it all out; science will continue anyhow and get around the temporary setback. It is painful to relativize in this way when I think about Marcy or Pierre, or other scientists I have known earlier in my training, who are now dead. It is the only way forward, though, and we have only not to forget their legacies.