Jeff Bower

Jeff's funeral was today.

I was not surprised to find the first parking lot full when I got there at a quarter-till. I was surprised that there weren't more people my age there, people I'd recognize from our nourishing mother Shawnee Mission North. But, people our age don't read obituaries as a rule, so I'm betting that despite some Facebook action, the word hasn't reached a lot of the people who would probably have been there to pay respects.

It was about as nice as a service for a 39 year old who did absolutely nothing to deserve such an end could be. A jazz quartet played, Stan Kessler and his crew. Which is what I'd want at mine, except I hope Stan Kessler is dead of old age before I'm in need of his services. Sorry Stan, but if you're playing that gig, I hope you're at least 120 years old.

There were, of course, scriptures read. Which is appropriate to a church, and I have to assume jives with what Jeff believed and would have wanted. But my emotional reaction to this part was not comfort. Honestly, it pissed me off. I'm thinking, no there isn't a time and a place for everything, not if that means someone who absolutely embodies 'best and brightest' is taken by the cruelest means possible so young. It may be hubris on my part, it may even be blasphemy, but at that point I think if there's a God at all, He has some answering to do.

When I explained I'd be leaving work at 10:30 to go to a funeral for a classmate who was dead of Alzheimer's, the result was predictable: Is that possible? The answer is it shouldn't be.

But if it pisses me off, I don't think it did Jeff. The one time I remember the subject of his possible fate came up he was very matter of fact about it. I was marveling at the huge row of hefty science fiction novels on his bookshelf, and he was telling me about how he loved the Frank Herbert Dune novels because you get 45,000 years of history (or something like that, I think) and I asked him how he had time to read all these books with all the other stuff he did.

Because the other stuff was amazing. He was a musician, a football player, a true scholar (tied for Valedictorian, took every AP/Honors course there was, literally), and seemed to take on every extracurricular activity there was. He said, very matter-of-factly and with no trace of self-pity, that his Dad had died young and there was a chance he would inherit the disease that killed him. So he didn't have time to waste.

I've had the mortality warning shot across the bow and it got me about half as motivated for six months as Jeff seemed to be his whole life. So it wasn't just the possibility of the disease, he was made of unusual stuff.