.: 7/30/07 :.

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good."
- "Funeral Blues", W.H. Auden -

Life is made up of memories that we so often find we wish we could remain within. Those memories typically revolve around the experiences that captured our senses. But even more, they are deepened by the people that we once shared them with, men and women that we were drawn to because of our having gone through it together. That being said, there are memories that I have of my friend, Jason Kessler, that have returned to me in light of his recent death. Jason and I attended the same church and youth group throughout our High School years, and later attended college in Southern California for three of our four years down there (including a semester in Israel). During that time, we grew up together amidst the same communities and faced so many of the same issues. There was a time in our lives when we felt like the poster boys for pastoral ministry at our church, considering the fact that we were both heading in that direction academically.

But life and time have a funny way of trying to dissolve even the closest of friendships, and in the years that followed our individual college graduations, we slowly but surely began to head in two different directions. We often tried to carve out time together, to simply catch up and remain invested in each other's lives. But over the past couple years, we allowed ourselves to become accustomed to less and less times such as those, and we became satisfied with occasional exchanges while passing on a street or in a hallway. My last encounter with Jason was during a break in our church service. I had seen that Jason was home and had made it to church, so I rushed back to give him a hug (something that we never failed to do as ongoing friends) and let him know about the love of my life (whom I would propose to only months later). Good intentions gave way to missed conversations and we let each other get away without moving any deeper in our initial exchange. I have carried with me since that morning the hope that I would one day get to introduce him to my new bride. I have carried with me since that day the hope that we would one day get to catch each other up on all that was happening in our lives. But I remained far too neutral about seeing such hopes be fulfilled, and death has silenced them all by stealing away my friend.

In my heart, I know that we were once close. But I now carry with me one question; "Were we alright?" Was everything okay between the two of us? Truth be told, I did not always know exactly what to do with Jason. He was a man who never settled for pat answers, and he drew life and passion from delving deeper into every mystery that stood before him. He was talented and often allowed his capacities to serve as an encouragement and inspiration to me. But I never had him figured out, partially because he always held his cards close to his chest, and partially because I struggled with my own insecurities. But there are incredible memories that I carry with me of adventures that he invited me into, whether it was giving the gift of a dry ice bomb at two in the morning to our pastor, or me giving him a lift ten feet up into the classroom through the narrow window, only to watch him fall hands first (one of which were stitched up) to the floor. Watching him run to disarm the alarm, only to be caught by the ringing sounds that woke up the entire moshav, was just one of the handful of memories that I have to remember my friend by.

Now? Now I live with the sense that I both miss him dearly and am saddened by the fact that I never did anything to continue on while he was still alive. But as happens in all of our lives, we remain in fellowship with those whom we share a common path with, and Jason's and my path was only for a while. My eyes are now opened to the fact that my friend gave his life away for a cause that he saw as great, as worth defending, as worth laying his life down for, if and when the cause called for it. But I never once believed that the cause would ever call for the sacrifice of a life such as his. He and so many others (friends and family) had not too distant futures to be shared for years to come. And the deepest pain that still lingers in my soul is that we will never get to share what we had been planning for for so long. The years of our youth were spent dreaming of how we were going to change the world, years filled with days of constantly pointing each other towards the same goal in the hopes that we both would remain awake and alive. But with his death, I cannot help but feel like one of the greatest stories ever told to me came without the sort of climactic ending that I had been anticipating. Chapters and chapters both written and revealed to me, to us both... only to have the story come to an abrupt stop when I first heard of the tragedy. My heart is still breaking at the reality of one less happy ending.

Our friend, our son, our brother, and the love of our life; he has been stolen from us, even when we least expected it. The questions that we knew he carried with him were seemingly never answered, though he and the Father know far better of the conversations that took place in his final days. What sense are we to make of the loss of a friend at such a young age? No sense... only the conviction that not everything is as it seems right here and right now. We have little to no answers, and yet are still invited into our own continuing journeys, with the divine hope that we will remain open to His hands and veiled intentions. He is good, even when His divine providence feels like a sucker punch to the stomach. Does He owe us any answers? Yes and no. Does He want us to know? I am not so sure, from where I stand right now. But He is definitely up to something. And I know that He longs to bless us, as He did throughout the 29 years of Jason's life. So we mourn the years that we thought would be ours, as well as rejoice with the years that were given to us (as fast as they seemed to come at us). I will miss my friend for as long as I walk the same earth that his feet once trodden. I am proud to say that I was a friend of his, for I am deeply proud of him! Some days will be harder than others. Unfortunately, this feels like the first of many to come. May God grant us the strength to continue on amidst pain and confusion, the eyes to see how life ought to be lived (to the fullest, as Jason sought to live it), and the enduring hope of being reunited with those who share our faith in the Father - a faith that He alone sustains!