Its not the Kilt on the Man, but the Man in the Kilt

My mornings have a typical routine that often starts with a blind groping for my phone to shut off the alarm. Once I am out of bed, I check my phone for calls and to find out what is going on with my friends and family on social media. Then bathing, then work. Today’s routine was thrown into shock as the first posting on my Facebook feed was this from friend and writer, Mary Ogden Fersner:

Sadly, Jeff is preparing his body and mind for end of life. Please everyone remember him as the funny, fun-loving, vibrant person he’s always been. He survived juvenile diabetes, beat kidney disease with a transplant, and a leg amputation with a positive attitude and spirit few would be able to muster. Cancer however, is a brutal foe. It has run him over like a Mack truck. This was Jeff on Plaid Night during the 2018 ShipRocked Cruise. He is my heart forever.

Jeff is my friend who except for a brunch last year, has been lost to me as so many friends by time and distance. We reconnected (as many reconnections have happened for me) through Facebook. And since Jeff is not a social media guy, I kept in touched with him through his wife, Mary, and in doing so got to know her. And though I can’t claim to know Mary well, she seems perfectly suited for Jeff, someone who can easily stand toe-to-toe with Jeff in spirit, love, and life.

Though we are both from Orangeburg, SC, I didn’t meet Jeff until I went to Clemson. My first roommate was Baxter Sowell. Baxter and I had gone to high school together. Baxter was good friends with the Fersner clan, and through him I got to know Jeff and his two fine brothers Joey and Johnny. Jeff quickly became a friend, co-conspirator, and mentor. Before I was out of school, Jeff and I shared an apartment. He was the last roommate I had in college.

Jeff (as-well-as all Fersners) is very smart. I did not know their sister well, but the three boys all earned master’s degrees in engineering. Jeff’s was in mechanical engineering and had something to do with heat transfer by radiation in a vacuum. What I remember most about it was when I would go to the bowels of Riggs Hall to visit Jeff where the laboratories are found, he would often demonstrate some of the fun things you could do with liquid nitrogen (the liquid nitrogen was required to achieve as close to a perfect vacuum as would be possible). My favorite demonstration was when Jeff would open the canister and tilt it to spill some on the floor. Briefly the liquid nitrogen would flow out like water upon the floor with a white cloud of cold about it, and before the puddle spread even an inch it was gone, evaporated. Cool.

Jeff was the first person to get me drunk. He along with other friends took me down to the Tiger Town Tavern where I was introduced to the game of quarters. Who knows how many cups of beer I had to chug, but it was enough to make the short walk back to campus a long stagger. There is no hangover like your first hangover. For this, I blame you, Jeff.

Jeff and I used to go downtown to drink, and sometimes we would stop outside the girls section of Johnstone Dorms on the way back to our rooms. With girls looking out the window into the dark of night I would do a “magic” act with Jeff accompanying me on the music, “Da DaDa Tah..Da Da DaDa Tah…” The act consisted of such feats as putting my hands behind my head, and when I pulled them back in front they would be locked together by rings formed by thumb and index finger of each hand. Once I demonstrated the unbreakable bond of those interlocked “rings”, my joined hands would go back behind my head and reappear separated! (maybe you had to be there) Some nights we would take home as much as fifty to seventy-five cents in pennies and nickels and dimes the laughing young women had tossed out the windows to us. By-the-way, I still perform those incredible acts of illusion – just for children. I don’t do it for coins, I just do it for the smiles.

At Clemson, Jeff was on the CDCC (Central Dance and Concert Committee). Through this connection, I was able to help with setting up for concerts by the likes of Stanley Jordan, and Jimmy Buffet. At the Jimmy Buffet concert, while I was onstage with Jeff moving monitors around and laying down cabling I turned to the thin early audience that had already gathered, spread and raised my arms, and yelled, “Save the whales!”

Jeff is the first diabetic I ever knew. Now I have a son-in-law and granddaughter both with type 1 like Jeff. Jeff never let diabetes get him down, and he never let it hamper him in any way I was aware of. There was a particular joke Jeff liked to play on others. As an example, I would be walking down the hall from my dorm room towards Jeff’s when he would run out into the hall with one arm flat against his side and the other wrapped around his body to hold it while yelling, “It’s stuck! It’s stuck! Help me!” all the while with a big grin on his face. When I looked at the arm he held, I would see a diabetes syringe high in the bicep flopping a little. Having seen this often, I would move to the side of him and kick him in the ass as he removed the syringe with a flare and a laugh. This is the Jeff I knew.

Jeff isn’t supposed to die. He is a friend, forever locked into my memory as one of the people that defined my all-important college years for me. And even though he will always be in my thoughts as someone unique and happy and just a little mad, he was supposed to be immortal. As my love and prayers float out to him and Mary, I hope Mary knows that my wife and I are here for her. As my friend lies in the hospital, I hope he knows I love him. I’m a bit angry at God, Jeff was supposed to be immortal.

To Dennis with Love

The horrible part of needing to write is in the ache to express in words those pivotal moments that changes one’s life when at such a time words cannot hope to suffice. Our friend (and this term falls infinitely short of what he truly is) Dennis lies in a bed tended by hospice, our son Michael, their neighbor Trish, friends on demand, and his heart and soul for the past twenty-eight years; Marc. Dennis is in and out of awareness of what is going on. He eats little or nothing now, and is being made as comfortable as possible. How I hate that last phrase, because it never leads anyplace good for those of us who watch and wait and pray.

I cannot talk about Dennis without talking about Marc. They have been a couple and inseparable for twenty-eight years and married for twenty-five. They are Marc and Den, inseparable, one. If couples can be said to have soul mates, they are ours, and we are the richer and better for it. Over the twenty years we have known each other they have become part of our family, and we part of theirs. Our hearts are breaking, and I wonder if they will ever heal because I am not sure they will ever stop breaking from this.

Since the devastating diagnoses of cancer for Dennis, Marc has been brave, doting, caring, and protective. He has been all we hope we can be when placed in such a situation. Even in tragedy, Marc sets a high bar. I think if the dictionary had a picture by the word “stoic,” you would find his handsome, bearded, and smiling face.

Dennis in health was a lanky handsome man of the earth, loving to tend the gardens both at his work (the College of Charleston) and at his home. Sometimes I think his goal was to make things as fertile and lovely as his soul. To see Dennis at labor was to know a truly intimate part of him.

Dennis in decline is a pallid, frail saint. Shuffling when he could still walk, but the movements of his hands though impeded by his health are oddly somehow beautiful and graceful punctuations to his raspy, ruined speech. He clings to his dignity, and tries to ask as little of the people around him as he can. Even when he needs nurturing, Dennis attempts to be the nurturer.

Our favorite nickname for Dennis is Mother Theresa, because he embraced all things so readily. Wanting to help or improve or simply lighten a load. I still laugh at the look Marc gave Dennis, when Dennis brought home a baby fox nestled in a box with a towel. Dennis had found the fox at work (then the El Pomar Foundation in Colorado Springs) abandoned outside its den. I believe the pup went to the zoo for rescue, but Dennis’s first idea was to raise him as one of his own (only Marc in his wisdom stayed Dennis’s hand in this). In the battle between nature taking its course and Dennis having his way, odds were always in Dennis’s favor.

It is not easy to say goodbye to such a heart and spirit. Selfishly I do not want to. Selfishly I want him bound to this earth and in our lives for much longer than we have had. My faith assures me that he is going to a place better than this, a place without prejudice, a place of pure love, a place that will only be enriched by Dennis’s soul. I take comfort in this. I know that ultimately death is harder on the survivors, and that the pain is now squarely moving to our shoulders.

Dennis, Jean-Marie and I love you truly and with all our hearts. We will miss you more than we can say. Thank you for all you have meant to us and done for us. Thank you for your comfort, friendship, and love through the too short years that seem like no time at all. Thank you for leaving your mark on this earth as the Godfather of our grandson. Thank you for being Uncle Den to our Children. The world is better with you in it, but now you are needed to tend other gardens and set another place to bloom. We will take care of Marc. Goodbye.