...Lenn

I wasn’t good friends with Lenn. He wasn’t on my Facebook and I wasn’t on his.  He was one of my Accelerated Freefall instructors and even though he kind of intimidated me on the drop zone, I respected him.  We would recognize each other on the DZ and say hi and he would ask me how jumping was going and how many jumps I had and blahblahblah.  Everything the old jumpers always asked the new jumpers.  I looked to him as one of the sky gods of Raeford and any chance I had to listen to him pass some words of wisdom, I listened.  Unfortunately I never shared a beer with him.  I’m shy and this is one of those times I regret that immensely.

Because then this sky god died skydiving.

One of the last posts I saw on his page was “ahh...Wednesday, my long awaited day off.  Its been forever since I had a day off.  Monday was the last one.  Glad to not have to be at the dropzone jumping.  I will be at the dropzone jumping if anybody is looking for me.”  How more perfect can your life be?  Replace “dropzone” with anything…garage, mountains, garden, whatever.  Its my day off and the only place I want to be is where I love to be, which fortunately enough happens to be where I work.  Seriously, how perfect can your state of mind be if that’s what you put out to the world in a random comment on a social network site two days before you crash in to the ground at terminal velocity?  A skydiver has a different view of terminal velocity, and while horrifying and tragic, I like to think those who see their life coming to an end at 120 mph think “well, its been fast and fun and you can’t say I didn’t make the most of it”.

I despise the trite statement of “At least he died doing what he loved”.  That doesn’t work for me.  That doesn’t work when you’re 10-yrs old devastated that your father just had a grain auger crush him while feeding livestock.  Or you’re 26-yrs old and your good friend was just blown up by a random IED while on patrol.  Or you’re 34-yrs old and the guy who taught you to jump just had his canopy collapse at 300 feet above ground level.  “Dying doing what he loved” doesn’t work.  But there is something to be said about living doing what you loved.  If you loved farming, soldiering, or jumping, and you died doing that passion, then God has blessed you by allowing you to do that to the end.  Lenn, you led a life to inspire.  Screw dying doing what you love.  We will all cheat that as long as possible.  But no one can argue that you lived doing what you loved and we all need to take a lesson from that.  Blue skies brother.