I took this picture in 1997, when stopping off to visit Brian and Kara on my way to California. Brian and I and a handful of others -- Josh Scott (who called this morning with the news) and Josh Thomson, later Eric Trager, a bunch of others -- we were a very close-knit group all through junior high and high school and for many years after. We played D&D, drove around (Brian was the first of us to have a car, a 1970 Dodge Charger), ate junk food, watched trains, got into trouble and kept each other out of worse trouble. In high school our teachers cheated so that Brian, Josh and I wouldn't have all our classes together. Brian, the other Josh and I wrote a game that's now (somewhat to my surprise) for sale on Amazon. We've been friends for nearly twenty years.

Brian died in a car crash last night, near his home in West Virginia.

It's going to take a while to put more coherent words together.

ours is not the first community to have discovered, perhaps to our surprise, that we are mortal. as children we see our heroes afflicted by mortality; then as adults, it is we ourselves who must stare into finality.

we have been blessed by technology, by the human ambition to continue in the face of illnesses and other situations that would have meant certain death only a few generations ago. yet still the emotional comfort, the true healing, requires a touch, a voice, human presence and community.

todd's community is strong, our love, trust and respect lying quiescent yet aware for months or years between blossomings, like a sleeping cat who will suddenly pounce.

(I wrote this a few months ago, while still reeling from the discovery that one of my best friends has leukemia. He's okay -- it is a relatively minor easily treated form of leukemia -- but I wanted to save & share the words. It sounds like a eulogy; I hope I don't have to finish this any time soon.)