Moving on.........

I ran down to a hospital this afternoon to support a fraternity brother. He's 23 years old and he'll likely be dead by the time you read this blog entry. Great guy who somehow had a freak stroke that left him brain dead.

I got the call that he wasn't going to make it this afternoon, so we all got into the truck and headed down to give our support to the family. When we got to the hospital, I went to the desk to find out where his room was located. I said the name and the man at the desk knew the floor and bed without even looking. I thought that was because the guy who called me had come through just before me.

When the doors opened on the third floor, there were people EVERYWHERE. Fraternity brothers, college kids, friends, family........they were all there. Most of the college-age kids were pretty upset. I've lost a couple of friends at a relatively young age, so it's somewhat less of a shock for me at this point. Things like this do happen, though that doesn't make them any less shocking. For a lot of these kids, it likely was their first experience with losing a close friend. It's extremely rough. You have a young friend on a ventilator who hasn't even reached the prime of his life. He's laying in a bed and will be dead in 24 hours and there's nothing that will change that.

It's a brutal reality, but it's obviously a reinforcement that life is short and nothing can be taken for granted. There was a good possibility that his organs will be donated, which would be wonderful. Hopefully something good comes out of this otherwise brutal situation.