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This won't be one of those bigraphical pieces. Mark never put much of that
type of thing on his own pages and I won't put them here. His own pages,
Forlorn
show only the dark side of this complex individual.
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He was often depressed. His
poetry or that which
wasn't lost in a disk reformat after a virus attack; and some of his
often quoted choices of music
Somebody
reveal this.
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He searched for that somebody. He was often a demanding friend but
was also one of the most giving people I've ever met. He rarely
expressed his feelings but he clearly considered his friends of
highest importance and if you were one of his friends, you knew this, and
didn't need to hear it from him.
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Mark and I met in December of '94 on a long train trip and shared the travel
between California where I got on the train to Colorado. He was quiet at
first but we hit it off instantly. We exchanged e-mail addresses and
to my pleasure, a note was waiting for me upon my return home.
In the two years I knew Mark, as our friendship grew stronger than any I've
ever known or seen, he revealed his lighter side. To the shock of many, he
had a broad smile, never seen in pictures that he "approved", posted on
his pages or sent to friends. He had a sense of humor which was dangerously
quick in delivery at times.
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There are memories of many periods of silence as he'd be present but isolate
himself from those around him, either in person or online, and the frustration
that caused.
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But I choose to remember the trip to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk
when he visited me for vacation in California and his
laughter; the picnic when I took the pictures below; the hard work and fun
times we had working together on his
1970 VW Bug
as he learned his first
about cars and auto mechanics. I still hear the ringing in my ears from the
White Zombie concert
he took me to in Portland (no I didn't go into
the pit but he did). I feel regret, but fondly remember the matter of fact
way he assured me that he would teach me to ski. And I still glow with
pride remembering his
High School graduation,
his first job that had "benefits" like vacation and medical coverage,
and his decision to return to his education and restart his Freshman year at O.S.U.
on January 6th.
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Our relationship grew closer. It's difficult to describe how
we focused on each other, sometimes to the exclusion of other
friends, when we were able to close the distance between us
for a weekend or week.
We became
family.
We found we already shared a lot and made plans to share
more. We kept returning, in so many of the things we did or said,
to earlier ideas. These were ideas which we both believed in.
Goals and dreams we could pursue together.
Read my poem of my first
visit
there in May of '95, after
5 months of keeping in touch via e-mail. Here is some of the early
E-mail
from when we first began to believe in a future in which we played important
parts in each others lives. Because I discovered I was spending more on motel
rates than a share of the rent, and as we'd discussed for some time,
I was to have become a part-time room-mate that February (only a month after the accident).
As Mark's grandfather said to me the evening before the funeral service, "We adopted Mark. He adopted
you."
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Friends and family, join me in remembering this joyful part of Mark,
our dear friend, brother and son.
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In this text file
I have gathered the last couple of e-mail messages between Mark and I
about an item he sent me, asking me to scan it for his web page, along with a
check to pay me back for a modem he asked me to get for him before the
"free upgrade" deadline. I hadn't gotten the modem to him yet but he
knew I would when I went up to visit in the end of January.
I scanned the article he sent. It's a large image, so it can be read.
Along with that e-mail, I've included the login records for the couple
of days before the accident and items of his schedule that I knew about. Mark
was a very busy and active person and pushed himself hard in the last few
months. He had been hired into a well paying job and had aquired a strong,
positive view of himself. His return to O.S.U. was one sign of this. His
rapid update of his resume' and submission of it to his agency was another.
He'd learned he could succeed and there was no stopping him. Almost.
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For any who really wish to learn more about the accident
(Warning - there are some shocking pictures of the car)
here are the newspaper articles
and pictures.
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This is the obituary printed on January
9th.
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Join me at the funeral service
held on January 11, and wish Mark peace, until we meet
again.
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I've included some e-mail notes sent to me from some of Mark's friends,
some friends of mine, and many friends we shared. Mark spent a fair amount of
time on the undernet.org IRC channel, #industrial and the Op there
set a subject line pointing to these Web pages. A number of the notes
were from his friends there. While some comments are personally addressed
to me, I wish to share the thoughts and support with others experiencing this
loss too. You can read the text in this mail file.
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Perhaps a lasting but not last thought, for Mark...
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