Jason’s Eulogy

Lead us from the unreal to the real, from darkness into light, from death to immortality. I miss you, my friend.

"The self is never born and never dies. It has not come into being and will never cease to be. Unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient, it is not destroyed when the body is destroyed." ~Bhagavad Gita 2.20

There is comfort in the belief of life living on, in the possibility that we will see our loved ones again.

As we gather here to honor Jason, we may feel him “looking down” on us, or sitting beside us. We might hear his rumbling laughter, his gruff voice calling our name. We may feel him hugging us one more time.

I have always been agnostic about the afterlife. It seems unlikely our souls will be preserved in amber at the time of our death, hanging out with one deity or another. If we have souls I imagine they will keep evolving, taking new forms and inhabiting new spaces.

If we do end up in a magical realm where we recognize one another, I would like to spend time with Jason in our 2015 bodies and personalities. At that time our friendship was deep and our dreams seemed within reach. He was my best friend.

Me and Jason, November 2015

Our group of friends (we called ourselves the Scooby Crew) was already spreading away from Western Massachusetts into other parts of the world, but we would get together regularly and rent beautiful homes to spend weekends in. Jason loved to lead us in medicine journeys. We spent the weekends anticipating, participating, and later processing. He knew how much medicine we needed, but often encouraged us to go a little further. Most wouldn’t, but I often did.

Along with the medicine was the vegan food. Jason and his partner Jamie created the container and kept us all nourished and delighted. There were homemade nut milks and Scooby snacks, coffees and teas, lots of nutrient dense, high vibration culinary masterpieces, all gluten free and delicious. We each chipped in with cooking or cleaning because we were all in love with one another.

I would give anything to go back to one of those gatherings and just soak in all that love again. We dreamed of building a retreat business together, finding some land by the water, spreading our love to the world. All the while, the center was unraveling.

Jason contained multitudes. He was the wounded child who lost his father to addiction and learned to hustle to take care of his family. There was an addict inside of him always pushing him to do more. He was simultaneously the most loving and caring of people, with kind words and a fierce heart.

For a while he found the balance. His love language was acts of service, and his love was so big that he could take care of all of us in little ways. His hustle was so big that he could be generous to all his friends and still support his mom and kids. At the center of his heart was his undeniable love for Jamie.

I both admired and was embarrassed by his ability to talk to anyone, to make jokes about anyone, to break taboos. He would insult somebody and two minutes later they would be hugging and exchanging numbers.

He was a vegan going into the world of drug dealers and telling them about Krishna, the Bhagavad Gita, and why eating meat is evil. He blended Hinduism and Rastafarianism with a dash of cosmic Christ and somehow made it all sound plausible.

He brought that world of gangster back to us, weaving curses and N words into our conversations as easy as breathing. Sometimes it seemed he was trying to get a reaction, but mostly it was just who he was. He was a king, a provocateur, a man trying to fill am insatiable hole.

There is a bond between us all, the Scooby Crew. Entropy is there, too. Some of us moved away, some fell away. We kept in touch, while falling out of touch. Eventually something in Jason seemed to break. I wasn’t there to witness the progression intimately, but each time I visited he seemed to be losing more of his center and drifting away from Jamie.

I broke up with my girlfriend and left NYC around the time Jason and Jamie were separating. The last time I visited them i could barely connect with Jason, he was heading into darkness and I was craving light. He had me firing his automatic pellet gun at a target in his backyard, trying to awaken the Marine in me. That me was long gone.

Leaving their house, I accidentally ran over Jason’s dog Zion, who was sleeping under my car. He had been dragging his hind legs around and seemed to be suffering already, but I felt so much sadness and guilt when I heard Zion’s howl. Jason came out of the house swinging and swearing, and I drove away to Colorado. It was a lot of trauma, and I didn’t see Jason again for several years. Zion lingered on a few more days, but had to be put down.

Time heals the wounds. There is another version of Jason I got to know in the end. He spent the pandemic years in deep addiction to opioids, while I created podcasts and apprenticed as a carpenter. We had a couple of awkward phone calls, him forgiving me and me not knowing how to help him.

Sometime towards the end of the pandemic years he hit bottom, spending a week in our friend’s camper going through withdrawals before going to rehab. We reunited in Massachusetts after he came out of rehab. I had another chance to be his friend.

Over the next several months he hired me to rebuild the apartment that he had destroyed with knives and torches while he was in the depths of addiction. I drove him to his probation appointments. As his home and life gradually improved, the disease of addiction still ate away at him. His ketamine treatment in rehab became a ketamine addiction in the real world. Luckily the state didn’t test for that substance, and he was able to pay off his legal obligations.

Despite the ketamine causing all kinds of problems in his life, his loving heart was waking up. He was looking for a way out of the gangster lifestyle and trying to make amends with his family. He wanted to see the Scooby Crew together again.

Eventually he went back to rehab for the ketamine. He had done a lot of damage to his bladder, and was in constant pain. The body keeps the score. In rehab he broke another taboo, found a new partner, and together they got a little cleaner. They bought an RV and travelled together. He was managing his addiction by leaning on tobacco and weed.

During his final months he found a love for harvesting crystals and gemstones. It was such a relief to see him turning his interests to something healthy. His relationship seemed to be going well. I felt hope and sent prayers.

I got a chance to talk to him on the phone a couple weeks before he passed. I could hear sadness and weariness in his voice, but he was excited about the possibility of the Scooby Crew coming together to harvest precious stones. I told him I would help him set up a website to sell them. I looked down the tunnel and thought I saw a light. He told me he loved me, and I told him I loved him. It was cathartic. I feel blessed to have had that last talk.

We all have this duality. The darkness and the light, the love and the struggle. I don’t know about the afterlife, but I have come to believe that traumas and patterns get passed down through generations. Maybe our ancestors are somewhere watching over us, but they are definitely inside of our DNA, our habits, our souls.

I couldn’t convince Jason to join AA meetings, even when I offered to go with him. He thought he could carry all the weight on his own. He was better at giving love than receiving it. I do think he was in the process of making amends. He was back amongst us, mostly sober. He had just done too much damage to his body, and one day it gave up.

Perhaps the act of dying filters away our impurities. We leave them all behind with our bodies as our souls rise up. The earth absorbs and creates new lives and stories from the compost of our troubles.

If 2015 Jason waits for me on the other side I will be happy to see him. More likely, I expect that neither of us will remember who we were, we will just be kindred spirits inhabiting some new form, making it up as we go along. Hopefully with a little more wisdom, a little more kindness, and dreams that we can bring to life.