Sunday, Aug. 7th
I wish I could blog only about where we've traveled and what we ate there but sometimes life is profoundly sad, something we were jarringly reminded of when we answered a phone call from John Kerns Friday night in the middle of watching Black Swan. Assuming it was BWCA-related, I was floored when he told me that one of my best friends was dead.
When we first heard car accident and later a fall, and given the "heard through person X who heard from Y and Z" nature of the information, we hoped and thought that it all had to be a mistake, but still Black Swan didn't get finished. I woke up happy and refreshed the next morning; it took a minute before I remembered what had happened the night before. When the phone rang a few minutes later and Liz broke down crying after listening for a few seconds, I knew there hadn't been a mistake.
So, now I have to talk about the life of someone I loved with many, many fewer wrinkles and grey hairs than a hoped I'd have. Everyone who has said things about Campbell on facebook has talked about his quite literally endless supply of energy and desire to make the world better. This is no coincidence and these two facts basically define who he was.
I knew of Jason in high school in the one year we went to Anoka together before about half our class left for the newly constructed Champlin Park. I knew him as one of the cool kids and just kind of assumed he had the standard high school cool kid attitude. The next time we met was a few years later at Gustavus. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but I know he came from across campus to my dorm to say hello, having heard from Aaron Wredberg that another northern suburbs kid was attending GAC. It was pretty much history from then on, whenever the dorm phone rang and Campbell was on the other end you knew fun and adventure were soon to follow, probably in a baby blue LeBaron:
Let's pledge the OK's, an unregulated fraternity that are allowed to "spank" you, feed you unpleasant foods, and otherwise make you feel uncomfortable.
Let's join the rugby team. Doesn't matter if you're small, you can be the hooker.
Let's go skydiving/snowboarding/scuba diving.
Let's go rollerblade down the stairs at the library. You go forwards, I'll go backwards.
Let's fill this empty milk jug with beer, leave this party, and drive to the casino.
Let's blow off the rest of this case day and drive down to Mardi Gras.
Let's drive down to Chicago and see the Grateful Dead.
Scratch that, we can see The Dead anytime, let's go to see Lollapalooza in Kansas instead (the Dead concert we'd skipped turned out to be their last).
OK then, let's have a Jerry Garcia memorial party at my parent's house.
Even with all of this, he found the time to work with special needs college kids.
And countless other things that were either with other people or upon which the statutes of limitations have not quite expired on quite yet...
As you mostly all know, Campbell was very unhappy about injustice in the world. Since he was the first person we'd met in college who was more passionate about the plight of the downtrodden as he was keg etiquette, Ross, Drew, and I often gave him good-natured crap about his constant quoting of Chomsky, Zinn, Nader, and Ghandi. I remember "clearly" a "deep" conversation we had one morning (after an all night "think"-a-thon) about some current world conflict or strife--Campbell: "Well you know, Ghandi always said...ah, forget it." I'd like to think some of his freshly learned wisdom rubbed off on us despite our being dumb 19-year-olds in flannel shirts.
In what is the understatement of the decade, the guy had charisma. Whether you were one of the highly attractive young ladies he had the superhuman ability to attract, some nerd he'd met through student government and treated with genuine respect, or the attractive lady nerd he met in one of he his peace studies classes, you pretty much knew you were dealing with a unique individual when Campbell was around...one in how many million is tough to say.
Tuesday, Aug. 23rd.
The funeral is over now and I'm back in MA. The wake was tough, but wholehearted laughter often rang out from a given area of the funeral home. The funniest moment for me was watching a co-worker of his from the home office in LA go through one of his photo albums from our GAC years (all captioned in Campbell's 3rd grade handwriting), OK rush's Hell and Olympic days, more specifically, showing scenes even more graphic than the pic I posted. Seeing the look on the guy's face change as he flipped through page after page of people playing name games and having hot eats and cool treats was pretty damn funny. I told him, "No biggy, just top secret fraternity initiation rituals."
"Jason never mentioned those," he said.
"We'd have had to have killed him," I said tactfully.
The funeral was, bluntly, emotionally brutal. Although speakers from every period of his life very eloquently and sometimes beautifully spoke about what he meant to them, it made his loss that much more acute. My favorite, the LA guy from the night before, spoke about how his hope was that Jason would be given the opportunity to be reincarnated as, and I paraphrase, one who guides others down the path to enlightenment and/or knowledge. He said Jason would probably unhesitatingly accept.
Pretty much.
Hearing people from later on in his life describe his passion for government and labor rights painted a very different and yet somehow very similar picture of Jason compared to the years I knew him best. An inevitable progression I think.
I held it together pretty well until the interment. I'm glad I saw saw his fiance Stephanie shoveling earth onto his casket. She wasn't shoveling weakly or ceremoniously; I think she needed to finish the job herself. If I never see anything half that heartbreaking again in my life I will also be glad. I don't think I could have been that strong in her place and I told her that. She maybe wouldn't have thought she could have either before she did.
After everything, Ross, Drew, and I headed out to Somerset, WI to see music, as we had with Jason many times. We saw DeVotchKa and the Flaming Lips on a perfect night and both were great. As if "Do You Realize" needed to be any more poignant.
Well, so long, my friend, those who knew you best will be saying "Campbell would have wanted us to do X" for the rest of our lives.
Do
You
Realize?
