Dylan Thomas had it right.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Ivan Noble did not go gently, or unforgotten, or uncelebrated. It wasn't the end he sought, it wasn't the notoreity he worked for.

Trained as a tech journalist, he became, for many, the world's leading expert on dying of cancer. And now it has taken him.

Before leaving, he left this.

Historical perspective after the break.

Decades before Ivan Noble's Tumour Diary, there was Mike Greenly.

Mike covered the early years of the AIDS epidemic. He interviewed doctors, patients, caregivers. He put a human face on it.

He never told his readers he had it.

I knew and admired Mike, and his work, which appeared on the old PARTIcipate system in the mid-1980s.

Somewhere, Mike and Ivan are exchanging notes, and laughing, out beyond pain, in the next realm...waiting patiently for you, and me, for all of us.

When our own rages subside, they will be there for us. As they are today.