I was at work yesterday, around 3pm or so a good friend of mine called me up to tell me that our friend Jeff had passed in his sleep. He was only 36 years old.

Nobody is sure what happpened, def not suicide. He was on a lot of medication for a MSRA infection, insomnia, and some heavy duty bronchitis medication, and he was drinking some that night, but he has always been extremly careful to learn everything about any medication he takes to prevent them from conflicting. Could have been anything i suppose.

I was supposed to meet up with him today at the Gym for a photoshoot. He is a 5th degree blackbelt in taekwan-do. He got us in with his Taekwan-do master to do a promotional poster project for a pretty big event. Last time i saw him was sunday at the first shoot, but we ran out of time to get all the shots so we were supposed to meet again today. So much for that.

jeff was a rare person, and probably the best friend i have ever had. Im not taking this well, none of us are.

Master Ackard still wants us to o the poster, he wants to make sure Jeff is in it.

Not the best pic, but i dont have the energy to dela with a file sharing server.

 

I'm sorry for the loss, Jack. I hope you guys stay strong. I'll pray for that.

 

We just lost a close friend a few months ago. Its hard. Especially at such a young age.


You'll make it through, just gotta be strong.

 

Man that's hard. I'm so sorry to hear that.

 

I'm really sad to hear that Chris. You've got to be strong for him and his family, I'm sure that's what he would have wanted.

 

I'm really sorry, Chris. I will be keeping you and his family both in my prayers, definitely. But stay strong like Evan said for him and his family. And remember that we're here for you if you need anything.

 

Damn that is a hard thing to go through, I am so sorry. I just pray i never lose someone close to me.

 

****, dude.

 

my gosh man, I am so sorry to hear that. I wish you the best in hard times like this.

 

Oh man. I'm sorry for your loss.

 

Sorry to hear. Stay strong. I'll keep you in my prayers.

 

My condollences as well man.

 

That really sucks man. I am sorry for your loss and will be praying for you guys.

 

Thanks everyone.

We are all taking it pretty hard, it was good having a few days off though. Still no word on when the services will be held, but his dad is going to have it open-casket which freaks me out cause i have never done an open casket funeral.

Friday night we all went to our local bar which was his hangout spot. And we all got completely loaded. Saturday everyone came to my house and we got completly loaded again. lol.

On a lighter note, we had Logans 2nd birthday party this weekend. The kid got completly spoiled. lol. It was a good time for all of our freinds to come together and celebrate rather than comiserate.

 

Sorry Jack.

 

Sorry to hear that Chris. Open casket funerals are a little creepy. I've been to two for my grandfather and great grandmother. I couldn't look for too long.

 

Although I understand the point of open-casket funerals, especially when something has happened so suddenly...but they're really tough. Again, I'm sorry that you have to go through this.

 

that dude was so damn good at taekwan-do, that he could break a board in front of him, behind him, and to either side, all at the same time.

I have his first 4 blackbelts at my house. Along with a one of a kind plaque that travels from master to master. Im photoing them before i give them back to master ackard.

in this pic he actually missed the board on the left, but he nailed and broke the other 3.

 

I'm sorry to hear that.

 

Sorry for you loss. Your friend was a bad ***, maybe you could do a youtube vid. I put some 1970s vids up of my mom for my family. My mom was the oldest out of 8 and died at 50. The video helped everyone out. You can get friends to gather pics and vids of your bud to make 1 video.

 

Im actually looking to put a coffee table book together for him and have it published at Blurb and give everyone a nice hardback copy that commerates him. We are going to go through his apartment either monday or tuesday to get it cleaned out and his belongings organized, im going to photograph all his trophies and medals and such and put something together.

his viewing is tomorrow, but we dont know if the coroner is going to release him on time.

the good news is the Booze he drank the night before had nothing to do with his death. Thaat was a huge relief to us, that it was not because of his own carelessness. This guy was extremly careful about drinking and taking meds and always did as much research as possible to understand how his medications interacted.

They are going to do an autopsy now, i guess they susect either a heart attack or the medication he was prescribed conflicted and killed him.

i whipped this up yesterday. The plaque behind him is the first of a series that probably wont extend beyond 5. It is the first one made in like 40 years or something, and he was the person who was in charge of holding it for this period. It travels from school to school. we was totally stokedd and honored to be the caretaker for a time so he asked me do do a pic like this for him.. Now i have the plaque, im going to give it back to master akard in the next few days, but i went ahead and did the picture for him

 

OH MAN! this keeps getting harder

well, the autopsy came back.

his death had nothing to do with his medication, and nothing to do with the achohol.

it is somewhat of a relief, because it would suck if he ccidentally did this to himself, or if the doctor gave him conflicting perscriptions

now it hits a little closer to home.

So i find out he had Pulminary Edema and Cerebal Edema.. basically the heart is not pumping the blood fast enough for the blood to deliver the oxygen to the cells, this causes the cells to get waterlogged somehow, swelling in the lungs, and swelling in the brain as well in this case.

I looked up Pulminary Edema and Cerebral Edema, there was a link and a list of different things that cause these to occur. the list was 52 items long, and smack down on 37 was "Mitral Stenoisis" which is a problem with the mitral valve.

My son logan...... . When he was born his Mitral valve was not shutting properly and caused blood to regurgitate back into his ventrical, calsing it to ballooon out 4 times its size and it pinched the left lungs bronchial tubes which compounded the problem, not enough oxygen being delivered by a failing heart and he got pulminary edema which caused his non-pinched lung to swell with fluid and work even less.



There were 51 other things on the list, but He made a comment to one of our friends that he needed to get his heart checked out cause he has not done it in a while.

that hits close to home.

 

Another thing too is as we gett older our old friends and school mates we know but never really kept in touch with, start dying off. This will humble you more than anything, when someone you know dies from something and they're close to the same age as you..

I've had a few childhood friends, who I've known all through K to 12 school years die from anything from a sudden heart attack, to one friend who I spoke with recently, who died from a blood disorder.

There seems to be that long span from friends you had who died young from car wrecks and stuff, to the current loss of friends from health problems that strike some older or middle aged friends. Got I hate getting older but I'm trying to live healthier, it aint easy letting go of old habits that didn't bother you when you were 30 something..

 

 

AAAAAAAAAHHHHGG

so i went to the viewing yesterday. I highly reccommend NEVER doing this. That was very hard.

That guy in the casket looked nothing like jeff. same chimpmunk cheeks and stuff... i know it was him, it was his body prepared by people who dont know him, so it really was not jeff.

The makup was prettty uniform. His mouth was glued shut and it gave a very tightlipped look. His head was angled way down too, and his fingernails were extra long. they really DO grow after you die.

his hair was neatly trimmed and combed, he was freshly shaved, ... it absolutly did NOT look like my friend.

We were there the full 2 hours, we had all made mention to eachother about how pissed off jeff would be at the haircut and shave. Before we left we all surrounded his casket on more time. I reached in and messed up his hair a little bit. Then another friend of mine messed it up even more.

Jeffs mom asked my friend krista to be sure to thank whoever messed up jeffs hair, that now it actuall looks like him.

lol.

now i have the service on saturday, tattoo saturday afternoon, and apartment cleaning on monday.

gawd.