don cuevas is dead

People stroll into our lives by many paths.

And the blogging path has provided me with a community of new acquaintances.

My discovery of blogs coincided with my decision to move to Mexico. After I consumed all of the books I could find about retiring in Mexico, I turned to the internet.

In the mid-2000s, there were not a lot of writers who were willing to publish their life experiences of living in Mexico. There were fewer still who wrote about topics helpful to my quest.

A lot of those bloggers are no longer writing. I met a few of them, but the rest have slipped off into the ether.

Then there were the writers who provided me with exactly the information I needed. I have met almost all of them during my residency in Mexico.

One of them was Michael Warshauer. Of course, I did not know him by that name at the start. He went by the anonym "Don Cuevas."

Our connection was food. Even before I moved to Mexico, I knew I had to meet him.

He was a great help in my transition moving across the border. He had suggestions for getting here and then settling in.

On my occasional trips to Pátzcuaro, we tried to see one another -- and were often successful. Because we both loved good food, our get-togethers were either at his home for an always-outstanding dinner or at one of the local restaurants he would praise in his blogs.

When I noticed that he had not posted any new blog tales for several months, I wrote to him. Several times he had admonished me for writing about my health. He said it was one topic he purposely avoided.

He then told me why his lack of writing and his health had collided with only one outcome possible. And that is what happened.

When my blogger friend Jennifer Rose informed me the Don had died, I had the odd feeling that a part of me had ceased to exist. The two of us were not close friends. But we had created a true bond over our discussions of what was important in life. And certainly life was far too short to waste it on mediocre -- or worse -- food.

Jennifer has written the definitive story of Michael's life (Michael Warshauer, Q.E.P.D.). She was a close friend of Michael and his wife, Susie, and has said all that should be said.

I can only add that I will miss Don Cuevas. Our community is poorer for this loss.