{"id":1185,"date":"2011-01-08T17:59:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-08T21:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/2011\/01\/08\/eulogy-for-bruce-joel-willoughby\/"},"modified":"2011-05-18T18:18:02","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T22:18:02","slug":"eulogy-for-bruce-joel-willoughby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/archives\/1185","title":{"rendered":"Eulogy for Bruce Joel Willoughby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bruce liked animals, games, martial arts, music, entertainment, and public policy, but he was first and foremost a voracious reader \u2014 went cover to cover through the Holy Bible at the age of nine, and figured he had read through it again at least ten more times. Beginning as a child, he consumed three to five books a week through much of his life. It was only natural that he would devote himself to writing. Keeping in mind his great love for dogs, here is something penned by his alter ego, Elbo C. Buckminster:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI agree with whiners, of the last few generations at least, that life is a bitch. But I\u2019m not whining when I say it. Maybe the first person to utter that phrase was misunderstood, maybe wasn\u2019t whining either, maybe, as I, realized that the spark of physical in this plane is protected by Nature, the bitch-goddess, sharp-toothed and warm-teated. And, like any bitch, when her offspring are threatened, Nature doesn\u2019t retreat. She bare her teeth, she threatens, she snarls \u2014 and she bites. She won\u2019t give up, no matter how overmatched, until the threat leaves or until she is torn to bloody shreds. So count on Life, your bitch-mother, for she\u2019ll not abandon you easily. But respect her. If you misbehave, she may snap your little puppy head off.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As most of you know, Bruce lost his solitary kidney in his mid 20s and spent 71 months on hemodialysis before gaining a transplanted organ, which would serve him for eight years, until he lost it while battling the devastating inflammation of his pancreas that left him gravely ill, hospitalized, and clinging to life for nearly a year, during much of which he could take no food or water by mouth. By his own account, \u201cI died a few times \u2014 three or four, I don\u2019t know \u2014 and at least once they were ready to call the time of my death, but one of the ICU nurses refused to give up on me; I guess she felt I still has some fight in me, and she was right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed. When he was finally released to tenuous home care, we were told that he was only the second patient in the 100-plus-year history of that Indianapolis medical center to survive such a severe pancreatic hemorrhage. We never learned anything about that other person, but we came to know a Kentucky man named Nathaniel who defied similar odds at UK Medical Center well below one percent, and he helped us preserve hope during Bruce\u2019s darkest days. That was 2005. But even more significant to us than Nathaniel\u2019s kindness \u2014 and, of course, the support and encouragement of so many friends and family \u2014 was Bruce\u2019s own valiant, grinding effort to meet daily challenges more daunting than it seemed any human being should have to face.<\/p>\n

Later (this was 2006, April), to a standing-room-only group of us who met on Sundays to share silence, in perhaps the most awesome extemporaneous public commentary I\u2019ve heard \u2014 one of those powerfully unique, you-had-to-be-there moments \u2014 Bruce told us that he made it through those grueling months by virtue of what might be understood, as he put it, \u201clying fallow,\u201d a spontaneous, involuntary suppression of normal cognitive and emotional activity, and I have no reason to doubt it, since he retained only a partial memory of the ordeal. There were times he was so fragile that the doctors could give him no pain medication, even after major surgery. Dana and I will always remember that during the worst of his pain, he told us that he was able to endure it by reminding himself that Christ had suffered even more. Any faith in the future we managed to keep was inspired by this, Bruce\u2019s own profound inner focus and his refusal to quit. Bruce wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said, \u2018if you but had the faith of a mustard seed\u2019\u2014not belief, but faith. Faith doesn\u2019t require belief, but a deeper knowledge, an intuitive awareness of possibility, even a denial of reality. Faith flies in the face of truth. So while I feel in my bones the existence of a being we, in our ignorance, call God, and the existence of an energy level beyond this lowly one of rock, flesh, and death, I refuse to qualify, quantify, or classify it, because to do so takes me further from the truth, not nearer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At long last, he was discharged to confront what he knew to be a difficult three-to-five-year recovery at best, with more surgeries and a relentless cycle of dialysis. Family and friends\u2014 that was five years ago. In fact, he went home after that first long hospitalization on Christmas Eve, and that was exactly five years ago this past Christmas Eve. Bruce had completed that journey of recovery, had made a transition, with his mother\u2019s help, to a new, less debilitating method of in-home care, and was optimistic about his chances for another transplant, with a return to school to fulfill his original goal of becoming an English teacher. And then, after all that, the earthly saga of Bruce Joel Willoughby came to a close \u2014 when his soul abruptly flew from a physical organism compromised by so many years of precarious health.<\/p>\n

We are here to comfort each other in sorrow, but more importantly, to celebrate Bruce\u2019s life, to be inspired by it, as I have been, and to accept that some things can never be understood on this side of the curtain. It brings us once again to the words of Cockburn, who Bruce admired most as a musician and songwriter (and it went well beyond their sharing the name of Bruce):<\/p>\n

An elegant song won\u2019t hold up long
\nWhen the palace falls and the parlor\u2019s gone.
\nWe all must leave, but it\u2019s not the end.
\nWe\u2019ll meet again at the festival of friends.<\/p>\n

Smiles and laughter and pleasant times\u2014
\nThere\u2019s love in the world, but it\u2019s hard to find.
\nI\u2019m so glad I found you; I\u2019d just like to extend
\nAn invitation to the festival of friends.<\/p>\n

Some of us live and some of us die.
\nSomeday God\u2019s going to tell us why.
\nOpen your heart and grow with what life sends.
\nThat\u2019s your ticket to the festival of friends.<\/p>\n

Like an imitation of a good thing past,
\nThese days of darkness surely will not last.
\nJesus was here, and he\u2019s coming again
\nTo lead us to his festival of friends.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bruce was troubled in body, but strong in spirit. One didn\u2019t have the sense that he was in decline, but quietly fighting toward a crest, ever determined, never in retreat, but slowly gaining ground, inch-by-inch against insurmountable odds. Always the chess player, he would find a way to extend the end game one more move, one more cunning evasion against near-certain checkmate, yet unafraid of passing, if a stalemate was declared. I doubt if there was anyone except his mother who really understood how hard he tried, including me, but I never lost sight of how incredibly remarkable he was among everyone I\u2019ve ever known. There were times when it seemed he held intact his presence here by sheer force of will. For me, he always will be the true \u201cImpossible Missions Force of Nature.\u201d <\/p>\n

It is fitting that we close with Bruce\u2019s re-creation of his summation from those memorable words he delivered in April of 2006, which he titled, \u201cHAH! MISSED ME AGAIN.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI leave you with this thought: If you have unfinished business in your life, get to it. Be it mending relationships, expressing yourself creatively, getting involved in community service, going for your dream job, returning to school, or losing weight \u2014 get to it. You may not be rewarded with a better economic life, or a longer life, or a happier life, but I guarantee you will be rewarded with a worthwhile life, a satisfactory life, whether it end tomorrow or ninety years hence.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce liked animals, games, martial arts, music, entertainment, and public policy, but he was first and foremost a voracious reader \u2014 went cover to cover through the Holy Bible at the age of nine, and figured he had read through it again at least ten more times. Beginning as a child, he consumed three to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,12,68,18,70,23,40,44,16,55,27,39,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/uj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}