I was asked to participate in his online memorial service tomorrow, so wrote this:
J understood better than anyone I’ve ever known that everyone suffers.
To me, he never once deflected, minimized, papered over or denied what others experienced as difficult or challenging. He never once deflected, minimized, papered over or denied what others experienced as tragic, agonizing, terrifying or excruciating, though he struggled with denial in his own life. He also never judged. As my close friend for several years, he offered help, connection and company during the most difficult days of my life, and his sister showed me the same unconditional acceptance and support. That extraordinary generosity runs in the family.
The reason J understood others’ suffering was that his own had taken him to the floor, then to the sidewalk, and to the lightless depths of the deepest ravine. As a world-class rock climber, J had often taken in views and perspectives that to most people are rare, wondrous and far from common experience. But J took in beauty with the same natural acceptance as he did ugliness. He seemed to me to judge or crave neither, but to present himself with an ultimate kind of humility to both.
When he was homeless, J presented himself to his fellows, and absorbed their suffering and their stories with the same love and acceptance that he brought to friends here, even later in his life when he was safely housed and accepted in community. Our church's homeless guests also meant a lot to J. He’d been where they are, and knew that listening to their stories and sharing his own was the best shelter he could offer them. Shelter in his heart, which was open, unguarded and overwhelmingly kind.
Parts of J’s life were overwhelmingly hard. He lived with addiction and loss and often struggled against a sense of shame. But when he came to us, he joined in wholeheartedly and became an integral part of our community. I’ll leave it to others to catalogue the uncountable ways he gave of himself, his strength, his energy, his friendliness, and his extraordinarily consistent willingness to say Yes, I’ll help. I’ll do it.
I know how grateful J was for this community, his family and friends. I hope he knew how grateful we are for him. He brought presence and willing effort and good humor to almost every day among us. Some days he’d feel underappreciated, and fairly enough, but it would take him no time at all to return and give again. One of the things I valued most about J was his profound rejection of any form of classism or snobbery. He would get positively snarky when he encountered it or perceived a situation that way. And, the disease he lived with would make him disappear from view now and then. When it came to matters of humanity or the heart, however, J showed up. He always showed up.
