Joel and I went to the same elementary school after I arrived in the fourth grade and though I don't remember when we met, we were in Cub Scouts together, spent time at each other's houses, and looked at a box of his dad's Playboys that he'd found in the garage. We then went on to middle school where we often sat at the loser's table during lunch and we both joined the Boy Scouts, often sharing a tent on our camping trips as well as our week at scout camp some summers. Our mothers set up a carpool, his mom taking us to school in the morning and mine picking us up at the end of the day, and they became close friends. In high school, Joel was in band and played the oboe (the most difficult wind instrument to play, or so I've heard) while I messed around and eventually dropped out. Along the way, he was involved in theater in school and became an Eagle Scout.
I didn't see him for quite a few years, but when I finally ran into him again, he had bloomed into a confident, creative and talented man. He had joined the Turtle Creek Chorale and performed with them all over the world for almost a decade. My mother went and saw doezens of his performances and whenever I was in Dallas and was able to make it, I went and saw him perform too. It had been a year or two since I'd seen him but whenever I did see him, it was a pleasure to take a bit of time to catch up and reminisce and to marvel at how long we'd known each other and the divergent paths our lives had taken.
Joel came down with pneumonia and probably waited too long to see a doctor about it. He ended up in the hospital and was there for a month, the pneumonia and tangential infections getting worse and worse, before his heart stopped. Doctors, doing what they do, spent ten minutes resuscitating him and when they brought him back, he was brain-dead. The next day, Sunday, January 25th at around noon, he died. He was 30.