Alex and I grew up in Lakewood, CO, and no one was ever luckier than me to have a childhood friend like him.

Alex was one of the most brilliant, entertaining people I’ve ever known—a good sport, up for anything, and we spent a lot of time from 4th-9th grade riding bikes all over north Lakewood and dodging mild trouble. The Witherills lived a half-block over from an open lot we called The Swamp—two acres of cattails, scrubby undergrowth, and enormous, 100 year-old cottonwoods, all encircled by the Farmer's Highline irrigation canal—but which was actually a small slice of Heaven. My father had a fully-equipped woodshop so Alex and I would spend weeks crafting variously ridiculous axes, swords, and shields (we were Dungeons & Dragons kids, through and through) before organizing neighborhood-wide "battles" that would consume the better part of a long weekend. Using empty one-gallon milk jugs and plywood, Alex and I also build the heaviest and most un-seaworthy raft of all time—its maiden voyage in the canal lasted all of 20 yards before its fifth or sixth capsize convinced us the project was hopeless.

Alex always knew the cool English bands before anyone else did. Don't know where he found them, but there was no better source for music that made the other kids say "That's really great—who are they?" I didn't meet anyone as attuned to music as Alex was until college and those guys were snobs about it so they don't count. That was Alex's secret: generosity. He didn't hoard secrets or look down at those who weren't in the know—he saw opportunities to bring others up to speed. He wanted to share the things he knew and the things he had in order to help others be their best. Figure he picked that up from his family, Tom, Carole, and Andrea: they never got tired of my near-constant presence in their home and God knows I must've eaten $5,000 worth of the Witherill's groceries over the years (that was in the 1980s, so about $1M in today's dollars).

Getting older resulted in dumber misadventures. In eighth grade, we wanted to ride our bikes from Lakewood to Boulder (about 30 miles) and everything was going great until I blew out a tire crossing Rocky Flats. Instead of hiking back to Arvada (an easy 20 minute drive from my house), we hitched a ride the rest of the way, enjoyed an afternoon on Pearl Street soaking up all weirdness, and then called my dad for a ride back home. Weirdly, my folks weren't all that amused. We had better results in the summer before our sophomore years in high school—in retrospect, the last time we got to spend multiple days together. Alex's mom had a business trip on Colorado's Western Slope, so with my parent's blessing (and as a parent now with kids of nearly the same age as we were then, I think they must've been crazy), she dropped us off at the top of Vail Pass and we backpacked north into the Gore Range Wilderness. Apart from a lightning storm above timberline (we were carrying metal-frame backpacks, too, and felt the hairs on our heads and arms stand up from all the static in the air) and another dumb hitch-hike into Vail for pizza on our last night, it was a fantastic trip. "Skiing" (in tennis shoes) down snowfields, the coldest swim on record, waist-high wildflowers.

Always felt badly that Alex and I drifted into different orbits in our teens, though that was mostly due to attending different schools. One of Alex's greatest skills was making friends everywhere he went—I know he’s left a lot of them heartbroken (but grateful for their memories of him). We talked semi-regularly over the years, trying at least a half-dozen times over the last two to meet up whenever one of us was in the other’s town, but dammit, something always came up and now look...

It took some time to process the news of Alex's passing and while the shock has passed, the sadness never will. More than sadness, though, I feel gratitude and joy for having had Alex in my life for as long as I did. I am better at who I am because of who he was.

Gone far too soon. I miss you, old friend. Go gently into that good night.