remembering jack brock

It has been exactly one year.

On this day a year ago, Anne called me to tell me my friend Jack Brock had died on one of our highways while he was riding his bicycle (jack is dead).

We tend to react oddly when we hear such news. Mine was the common reaction. I could not believe it. Jack? The guy was too full of life to be dead.

But he was. Within three weeks, his friends put together a memorial get-together, and we all told the stories that made us appreciate Jack. Warts and all (putting jack to rest).

Last Monday, a group got together to once again remember him. I was unable to attend because of my travels. And that was too bad. There is barely a week that goes by that I do not run across one of Jack's outstanding photographs or one of his sardonic emails. Yesterday I opened a file to discover a Doonesbury cartoon he had sent me -- lampooning women.

Mexican highways are dotted with crosses and small shrines -- placed there by family and friends to remember someone killed near that spot. Our roads seem to require regular sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli. And there is one for Jack on the side of the bypass road where he died.

When people come into our lives, they change us. A part of them becomes a layer of who we are. In that way, Jack lives on.

But it is always appropriate to pause for a moment when we think of those who have had, as Anne Lamott would say, a major change in address.

That is what I am doing this morning. Thanks for the memories, Jack.