Every now and then I'll get an email from my high school girlfriend. The email doesn't say anything, it's just a link to the online obituaries. This time the obit was from a friend I haven't seen since high school. He was a skater. He lived in a upscale house in Salt Lake City. His house clung to a hillside along an artery in and out the neighborhood. When he was 17 he talked his father into letting him build a massive halfpipe in his backyard. It became the best (albeit short-lived) halfpipe in Salt Lake. The view was incredible. Scott loved The Who and Vespas. I can still see him wearing a dark trenchcoat and riding his white Vespa to school. He had black and white wingtips and always a crisp flat top on his red hair. When I knew Scott he was deep and introspective, fun but also somewhat dark. I remember one night hanging out on South Temple (a major street in Salt Lake) with Scott after a party. He was taking great pleasure out of throwing full beer bottles high into the air and watching them smash into the middle of the street. That is why I always wondered what had happened to him, his life could have gone awry or maybe he made something of himself. Turns out Scott definately made something of himself; after becoming a missionary for the Mormon Church in Korea he came back and studied Korean literature. He graduated from Cornell with an M.A., got a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard where he was awarded a Ph.D., becoming the first person to enter the Ph.D. program to study Korean literature. He then became an assistant professor at the University of Washington. Then Scott learned he had pancreatic cancer and within nine months he died. After learning that he had cancer he decided that he would chronicle his bout with it in a blog: www.donotgogentle.blogspot.com. And while its somewhat voyeuristic to read the intimate thoughts of a stranger, I think what Scott was trying to do was to chart the path for those that will come after him, which is important because if we happen to find ourselves in similar situations we can notice the thing (whatever that thing may be) and maybe not get too wrapped up in it or maybe at least see it coming and brace for it.

Imagine you're moving through your life, beginning your career, enjoying some success and good health, and like anyone else you're making plans. You're 38--in many senses it's the prime of your life. In any event, you're young still. You liked reading and writing so you went to graduate school, you traveled a bit, in 2003 you started teaching poetry in a university in Seattle. You get halfway through your second year, gearing up to finish that "first book," when your doctor calls to follow up on some tests about stomach pains you've had: "You've got cancer of the pancreas."

Here also is Scott's beautifully written obituary.

I think I'll go out now and throw a beer bottle.


Howie? Howie with the white wolfsberg rabbit that we used to rally in Howie? The one that taught me how to play "Bottled Violence" on the guitar?
www.davejenkins.com  


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