As many people know by now, Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at age 47.

If you haven’t watched his Last Lecture yet, you really should. It’s fun and inspiring and, for me, emotional (in a good way).

It’s difficult to know how we will face the knowledge of our imminent death. I like to think that I will face mine with a similar sense of fun and positive focus. I’m sure that having witnessed his very graceful handling of it will make that more likely for a lot of people.