Ken is gone.Tom's brother, Ken, passed away unexpectedly, but apparently peacefully in his sleep, sometime during the early hours of Friday, the second of October, at the far-too-young age of 53. He'd had some recent struggles with his health, particularly with respect to his heart, but I think it's fair to say that none of us realized that his condition was still quite so precarious.
He had been living in the Pomona area near his mom. He also leaves siblings Tom and Diana, and their families in addition to his sons Jacob and Jeremy, who are in their early to mid-twenties.
Those are the dry facts. Some further thoughts:
Ken was a very kind, consistently sweet and gentle man. I didn't know everything about him, but I would guess that it would be a nearly impossible task to find anyone in his life who'd ever considered him at all mean or even intentionally disrespectful.
The last few years, he'd been especially attentive to his mother, with whom he spent many hours each week providing many kinds of assistance and companionship. He had a (very) big laugh and a generous heart.
He also had quite an interesting brain. Early on in his life, you could not fail to be impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge of certain chosen interests. I remember TV and music. Seriously. He knew all the shows, characters, actors, producers, dates, schedules, themes, much of the dialog, and other trivia associated with television programs he liked. Ask me today, and I can't tell you what stations and on what days my favorite shows appear. He collected a crazy-big (in the thousands) assortment of music albums and the knowledge of the minutiae of the music world that would impress the folks at Rolling Stone. He was also very computer-savvy.
Ken was a special and complex soul. Only within the last several years was there a somewhat better understanding, for him and the rest of us, of some of the struggles he lived with day to day throughout his life. It wasn't a simple diagnosis, but a major part of it was that he had a type of Asperger's that limited his ability to process some kinds of information, especially social information. Plenty intelligent, he couldn't form some of the natural social responses as easily as most people and thus seemed a little odd to many.
Yet, even though he was on the receiving end of quite a lot of misunderstanding, especially from his peers as a young person, he rarely if ever lashed out or became what I could identify as a bitter or angry person. A strong and uplifting example for me, I think. How do I treat those I perceive as different or how do I respond to those who treat me poorly? We are all glad that, especially in the last year of his life, he seemed happier than we'd seen him in a very long time.
Oh, we'll all miss him a great deal. I'm glad to have known him for so long. He'll always remind me to have patience and better understanding for anyone with whom I have contact. And I'll always remember his laugh.
