Two years ago today, Kyle died.  I’d like to say I remembered the day.  But Brian did for me.  What I remember better than the day is the time. 

Kyle’s death brought with it the sobering realization that people just like me die.  Fathers with small kids.  People in love.  People with dreams not yet materialized.  People with clean x-rays and straight backs and quick minds.

Sobering.

I was sobering up in those days anyway, the inebriation of success beginning to wear thin, deciding every day whether to have another or hold tight through the hangover.  I was addicted, truth be told, to my own comfort (I still like it a bunch) and the belief that I deserve more than I merely need.  I was waking more and more often in my big bed back then to an empty place square footage in a gated community couldn’t fill.  I was feeling like doing something else, like being something else, but needed a push to turn the feeling into movement.

Then I went to El Salvador and saw poverty, real poverty, for the first time in my life.  And a couple months later Kyle died.  And so I moved – literally and figuratively.  Because people like me die and when they do it reminds some of us to start living.

Thanks, Kyle.