A Complete Tragedy

No, you haven't accidentally logged into a different blog. And no we haven't undergone Father/Son plastic surgery. This posting is dedicated to a truly great friend of mine that recently passed away - Shannon Childre.

I really have (and still do) the best intentions of posting more often, but his death has forced me to hit the pause button on a lot of things over the past two weeks. Shannon and I have been creative partners for a good portion of the past 10 years. When I was an intern, he was the first person to really give me a chance and show me the ropes around the agency. We had plenty in common so we hit it off and made some great memories over the past decade together.

Shannon and I traveled out to San Diego for Comic-Con 3 weeks ago with some other coworkers to help our client man their booth. The second day we were there, he went out for a jog along the boardwalk by our hotel and collapsed from a heart attack, at the age of 39. One of our mutual interests was eating the right kinds of foods and giving our body a good sweat when we had the chance (it's harder to work it in with kids). A total and complete biological fluke left him dead shortly after he got to the hospital.

To add to the situation, he wasn't carrying an ID and we didn't discover that he was truly missing until he was a no-show at dinner that evening. We raced around the city to try and put the pieces together, went to the hospitals looking for injured John Does, and we sadly discovered him as a deceased John Doe. My body went into a complete shaking shock, the only other time I experienced this sensation was right before Benjamin was born. Except that was shaking from excited shock, not sad shock.

The whole event is filled with a series of "firsts" that I never wanted to perform a "second." Packing up his hotel room, flying his stuff home, trying to find words that will console his wife and two children, planning a memorial service, trying to work with his blatant absence. The entire flight home my body was completely tensed up trying to fight off tears, and I couldn't wait to get home and hug Emily and Benjamin.

There is hope though. Shannon's death has brought people and emotions out of the woodwork. About 500 people attended his memorial and is was a time for tears, laughs and celebration of who he was and a chance for all of these people who he positively impacted to get together in the same room to say "thanks" to him. And "thanks" to everyone else there. Compliments came off the tongue easier, people told one another how appreciative they were of one another - it was a great evening.

The tragedy is that Shannon wasn't there to see it, and that it took his death to shake people out of their rat-race funk and rediscover their own humanity. I eulogized him at the service (another First) and I tried to leave people with a positive message that they were his legacy, and for them to recognize the traits they admired in Shannon and apply them to their own lives. I also tried to pass on a simple lesson that came out of a conversation Shannon and I had - he recently started to learn how to speak German. I asked him, "Why?" and his playful response back was, "Why not?" It was just something he had always wanted to do, so he made a move to learn German.

My challenge to the audience at the memorial and to you today is to say "Why not?" more often in your lives. Yank those things off the backburner and just do it - take that trip, learn that skill, take a class, volunteer somewhere, or suck it up and ask that person out that you've been eyeballing for weeks. Shannon's passing is proof that life is clearly to short to not roll the dice more often.

The saddest part of this whole incident, and one that I haven't cared to dwell on too much, is the fact that his 2 year old boy (Griffin) and his 1 year old girl (Lily) will have to learn about their dad through stories, old pictures and mementos from his past. Something no child should have to endure. This obviously makes my imagination go crazy thinking how that could have been me and what Emily and Benjamin would do if I were gone. And that really makes me sad.