On anniversaries

Tomorrow is the first day of my fourth year blogging – on Blogger, that is. I used to do a bit of a blog on my old Joel and Steve site before this blog was up, but it was a lot different – I actually had to add the text into the HTML manually. (I had started this blog in 2003, but I didn’t add any posts for almost two years.)

After the comic site was pretty much over with, I decided to keep my blogging going, albeit over on another host, and then I transferred everything over to Blogger a few weeks later.

My first post here commemorated another anniversary – it had been nearly one year since the tragic death of my good friend Jeremiah. He died on February 29, 2004 – Leap Day – the first accurate anniversary of which will be tomorrow.

On Saturday, Feb. 28 my roommate John and I had driven up to Kingston to visit Scott (Ashman), and JJ had called me while we were on the way up there. He’d wanted to know what I was up to that evening, because he didn’t have any plans. I had considered shortening our trip so that I could get back to Portland earlier, but I decided not to. So JJ had a party at the house he was living in – whether or not it was his idea, I don’t know – and after a few rowdy, late night hours, something horrible happened which ended Jeremiah’s life.

For a few weeks after that, I secretly felt guilty that I could have prevented everything if I’d just been there for JJ that night. There would have been no party, no alcohol, no gunplay, no death. It was only by the grace of God that I began to heal. He showed me that even though He didn’t cause JJ’s death to happen, it was still in His plan, and that a greater good was to result from it. And even though I will never see but a sliver of the resulting blessings which have flowed since that time, I know that God has miraculously touched so many lives, including my own.

So here’s to the next four years – while we won’t have Jeremiah with us in body, we’ll always have him in our hearts and memories. God bless you all.