We lost a friend this week

I found out 2 days ago that we lost a friend in a motorcycle accident. He was 24 years old, one of the more funny people I knew. Underneath his jokes, his tough guy attitude, there was a soft heart. I met JJ at the job I had before working for the school district. His carefree attitude and love of jokes and laughter drew many people to him. His life was cut way too short. He had a lot left to do in this world. He was very good at computers, very smart underneath, such a loss.

Dion and I found ourselves talking about things that we remembered about JJ that were so typical of him. Although we hadn't seen him in a while, he has left a hole in our hearts. Here are some of the things we remembered about this guy.

The boss at work had asked to have a flower bed planted at the end of the drive at Gemini, and one was planted. It was beautiful, lots of bright colors, pretty landscape bricks and bark chips. It grew, and as it grew and grew, slowly corn stalks popped up and began to hide the beautiful flowers. You couldn't help but laugh at the sight, but what made me laugh more was the thought of JJ sneaking in and planting the corn. The boss really had a love/hate relationship with JJ. He saw his potential, but cringed at the things JJ did, such as planting corn in the flowerbed.

It was New Years, the start of the year 2001. We had a little party at our house. JJ found Dion's weights and took two of the bigger barbells in both hands and picked them up and held them straight out. As time passed his whole body started to shake from trying to hold them up. His facial expression were enough to make a person pee their pants. Later that night he found our popesan chair and crawled into it and slept. We had a fun night.

JJ lived his life having fun, laughing, making friends, and just being a good guy. I told Dion the day we found out that I had just been thinking about JJ, wondering how he was doing. I wish I would have reacted to that thought. As I said before, it had been a while since we had seen him. We will see him tonight physically for the last time at the wake, we will see him often in the little things, like corn stalks. I have a fortune cookie fortune taped to our computer. It says, "Life is a gift, don't waste it." JJ never wasted it. May he rest in peace.