July 27th - A Story of Love & Loss

As I get older I feel there is more significance as one year rolls past to the next.

Maybe it’s me realizing that the years are going by and I don’t want to miss them so I try to catch them while they are still close. Or maybe it is that I realize the importance of reflection, because as I once heard a wise man say “Learning = Experience + Reflection” -Alyn Jones. And I have a lot of experiences but don’t always take the time to reflect.

Thus I reflect.

As I look back on 2019 it is difficult to fully capture everything that happened this year. To summarize it in one sentence I would say – This year changed my life.

This year changed my life.

So many first time life experiences, falling in love with my future wife, traveling to South America, But let me get more specific because there was one particular day this year that changed me forever. One day that changed everything. One day that went from the highest high to the lowest low. That day was July 27th, 2019.

Before arriving in San Francisco to spend the weekend with my family and propose to my then girlfriend, Selene, I gave my friend Duncan a call to see if he could pick us up from the airport and meet my future wife.

There’s no one quite like Duncan Brown. Black hair, blue eyes, inquisitive beyond measure. You know that phrase “Jack of many trades master of none”? Well for Duncan it is more like “Master of many trades, jack of none”. Duncan was 3 years younger than me in high school but became close friends with my friend group and even followed me to Occidental College where he was a double major in Biology and Spanish. He was kind of like a younger brother to me, as he was an only child. He would call me up every other month. And whenever I was back in my hometown of Sebastopol I would see Duncan. We would grab ice cream at Screamin’ Mimi’s. He and his mother even taught me how to make sourdough bread.

Anyways, Duncan didn’t pick up the phone, so after it went to voicemail I told Selene about my wonderful friend who I looked forward to her meeting. “There is no one quite like Duncan. Though he didn’t always fit in in high school he is the kind of person that is going to excel in whatever he does. I think he will be a CEO or the leader of a big company in the future, probably learn 5 languages, there are no limits for what he will do, he’s just so passionate about life and about meeting people”. It was a Wednesday, just a normal Wednesday. Nothing particularly good or bad about it.

A few days later was July 27th, the day I had planned to propose to my then girlfriend. We had a beautiful morning in the Redwood forest and then I prepared a delicious pick nick for us to enjoy as we overlooked the rustic Pacific Ocean at a beautiful beach called Goat Rock Beach. Then we came home where I was planning the grand finale. Asking the love of my life to spend the rest of her life with me. I had a missed call from my friend Jack and I was planning on calling him back on the drive home but somehow it slipped my mind. I think it was God’s grace knowing that had I heard the news from Jack it would have changed everything about the day.

We arrived at my parent’s house on the apple orchard. We have a statue of an apple tree at my house with 6 bluebirds in it, one represents each member of our family (my parents and the 4 boys). When Selene was in university her friend group called themselves The Bluebirds. So I wrote a poem for Selene in Spanish (Her first language, she is from Colombia). And in the last line I asked her to be my bluebird. In Spanish. Then I played for her a song I had written for her.

Words are important and sometimes they are thrown around so much that they seem to lose value.  Up until that point I had not told any girls I had dated “I love you”. I wanted to save those 3 words for the woman I was going to marry. So the last line of the song I told her “There’s 3 words I’ve been waiting to say to you, but I think I will start by saying 2 – Te amo (I love you in Spanish)”. Then I got down on my knee and asked her to marry me. After her tears and saying thank you she said Yes. Then I said to her in English “I love you”. It was so beautiful. We then took communion with a bottle of my brother’s wine and then sang a worship song “Good Grace” with my parents. God is the center of our relationship so we wanted to honor Him first and foremost. 

Perfect is a big word. But I’m going to use it. It was perfect. 

Laying in bed that evening reflecting on such a beautiful day, as any good millennial does I was scrolling through Instagram. I saw a picture of Duncan with Jack and some writing below it that said Rest in Peace…WHAAAAT 

Then I saw on my friend Ben’s Instagram the same picture and some words memorializing Duncan’s life. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. How could Duncan have died? I just called him on Wednesday. Wouldn’t this be on the news?! So I looked it up on Google and saw that Duncan was flying with his mom and dad and their plane crashed just outside an airport in Nebraska at 2:35pm on Wednesday. The day I had called him. 

My heart sank. It was real. Duncan was dead. And I didn’t know what to do. I got up and started nervously pacing around the house. Then I told my Dad. He said he knew but he didn’t want to tell me earlier that day because he knew I had been planning to propose. He didn’t want to ruin the best day of my life.

So there I was on July 27th. I had just made the biggest decision of my life (besides following Jesus) to marry Selene and then I found out that my dear friend Duncan had died.  

Life and Death.

Side by side.

As if to taunt each other.

As if to say “cherish every moment of this life because in one moment this life will be gone”.

As if to say “Pick up the phone Joseph when friends are calling you, even if they ramble on for tens of minutes because if you don’t you will be left with a voicemail that starts with – Hey this is Duncan, and ends with you wishing you had never taken his calls for granted”. 

Life is so beautiful. And death is so permanent. But it doesn’t have to be.

That’s what I learned this year.