My aching sad heart

[Kevin]

My aching sad heart

Love and live well, and enjoy the people in your life while you can.

Wayne posted our Weekly Update a little while ago. In it, I talk about being thankful for all the marvelous people in my life. Palladium fans included. That it is the wonderful and vast array of people that I’m most thankful to have in my life.

I just learned a few minutes ago that my list of friends is one less today.

It is with a sad heart that I report my friend, Kevin Lowry, died today. The cause of death is unknown at this time. Natural causes are presumed. Kevin was not ill. His death is a shock. He was loved by many.

Kevin Lowry is another one of the unsung heroes behind the scenes at Palladium Books. I met Kevin through Erick Wujcik. Kev was a gamer and great guy. A gentle soul and caring person who worked hard, tried to see the world as a better place than it was, and who was there for his friends. Kevin is another person who lent Palladium Books money when nobody but a friend would have considered it. Erick put put out the call for help, and Kevin stepped up, even though he hardly knew me at the time. “If Erick said you were a good guy and could be trusted, that’s good enough for me,” Kevin often told me.

Even though I owed him money, Kevin and I became friends. He would drop in to visit and we'd talk about gaming, Erick, and every subject under the sun. When he found out I had diabetes (so did he), Kevin helped me understand and manage my condition. He introduced me to the healthy value of Hemp Heart seeds which he swore by. Kevin even purchased my first package of seeds to try. (They really do help control your blood sugar levels. I put them in my salad. Now I swear by them too.) And I was singing Kevin Lowry’s praises the last few weeks and was just saying yesterday that I’ll have to invite him and Debbie to our Christmas party this year.

As I write this, I fight off tears. My body suddenly aches and I can feel a headache mounting in my left temple.

I didn’t know Kevin Lowry as well as many other people did, but he was my friend. I enjoyed many a long conversation with the big lug, and knew Kevin to be one of the good guys in a world that is all too often an ugly place. Though I will always think of Kevin with warmth and a smile, the world and my life is a little emptier and sadder with his untimely passing.

My deepest sympathies to Kevin’s beloved Debbie, his family and friends (who are many).

While I’m on the subject of friends lost, I want to give a shout out to another dear friend, Rob Justice. Rob passed away at the beginning of the year, though I didn’t learn of it till the end of April, just before the Palladium Open House. People were excited about the Open House and I didn't want to ruin their excitement and fun by talking about Rob's passing.

Rob Justice was a brilliant, creative man with the soul of a poet and spirit of a warrior. He too was a gamer and a pal I met through Erick Wujcik. Rob was a therapist who quite literally helped keep me sane when my world was falling apart. For a while, he saw me as a client and gave me generous amounts of his precious, valuable time even though I didn’t have the money to pay him. Rob charged me a very small fee (a third of what most would charge) and waited a year and a half until I could start to make payments. During our sessions, we actually became good friends. Long after my clinical need of Rob’s expertise, we remained friends and would talk for hours at a time. He was even at the Palladium Creator’s Conference in 2010 for the first day of the event. Sadly, he died before sharing with me his vision for taking RPGs to a new level. I think of Rob often and with great fondness. He is missed.

The point of this Murmur is love the people you care about. Take a minute out of your busy, hectic life to tell the people you care about how much they mean to you. That you love them. That they are special. And that your life is richer because they are part of it.

Be thankful and savor every moment you have with these special people, because we never know when that special person might be taken from us.

I’m thankful and proud to have been able to count Kevin Lowry and Rob Justice among my friends. I am better for having known them.

With Love and Appreciation,
Kevin Siembieda

© Copyright November 21, 2012 Palladium Books Inc. All rights reserved.

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