John Came Home Today

At least that is how his brother put it after we packed up John's condo and brought his belongings to his parent's home today. The condo was a significant milestone in John's life and he was so very proud of finally owning his own home. Situated in Adams Morgan, John's place reflected the life style he so enjoyed. Best of all, it was within walking distance of Alex.

Although John had many strong points, financial management was not one of them, although he was getting better at it the last year of his life. After years of hesitation, John brought his condo at the height of the DC real estate bubble, December 2005. The bottom fell out of the market in January 2006, and its been falling ever since. "Buy high, sell low" was John's motto. However, none of this dissuaded him in his great plans to fix up the place in true John style. If planning could accomplish things in its own right, John could have refurbished his condo several times over!

Deciding what to do with John's place has been one of the many challenges his family has been dealing with over the past several months. On the one hand, since he was so proud of finally buying a place of his own, and had such great plans for it, all of us were tempted to somehow hold on to his condo. On the other hand, we also recognized that John was astute to recognize that his condo was just a stepping stone to even greater things in life, and when discussing his plans with his parents not too long ago, he commented that the condo would be too small for him and Alex once they were married.

That said, we recently decided the best course of action was to give up John's condo and we packed up his belongings this week and moved them out today. But none of his belongings will go unused. Many of them will be put into use at his parent's house, not as a shrine to John but rather as just another means for the personality and spirit of John to become known to others, especially his nieces and nephews to come, as well as others who will never have the pleasure of having known John in person, but will know him nonetheless through his brother and sister and Alex and his parents and other family members and so many of his friends. John's spirit lives on, as does the memory of his life and his dreams and his accomplishments. All of us will forever be on the lookout for opportunities to share John with others who did not have the joy of knowing him personally. John's tangible possessions, which reflected so well his personality (I've never seen so many computer cables in my life) will be just one means by which we achieve this. And we look forward to toasting John soon with his homemade beer!