la bomba shelter

Sudden, unexpected death of a friend

I didn’t know John Woodward before the accident.  Sometime in the 1980s he was thrown from a car in a crash and suffered brain damage.  After that he was prone to seizures, had to take lots of prescription medications and occasionally experienced blackouts.  Nevertheless, he impressed friends and family by putting his life back together, and advocated for other disabled people to be able to live independently.

I met him for the first time in 1989.  I would rather hang around with him than a lot of other people I knew.  Communication wasn’t always the most linear, but I found him genuine in a way I find few of my other friends — he lacked a tendency to back stab or toward actions justified by moral relativism.  He was enthusiastic.  He always asked about my two sons and wanted to hear all about them, as bad as the news sometimes was.  He would tell me to support them as much as I could and to be a good role model.

He was on the way back to his sister’s house from a grocery store a few days ago when he experienced a seizure, and then cardiac arrest.

Rock on, John!  Wherever you may be now.