Paper Hearts

Just over year ago a man came to my house and cut out paper hearts.  His name was Dan Botkin and he was about to get married.  My brother was his best man and had come to my place to get help working on a slideshow for the wedding.  In all the chaos that comes along with getting married Dan just needed to spend an evening with his best friend.

My brother and Dan with Dan's car on his wedding day.

He came under the pretense of helping, but he spent most of his time looking up goofy videos on his phone.  And my brother didn't mind.  He worked away at the wedding video and called friends to troubleshoot and watched the videos with Dan.  The guy on a buffalo was their new favourite, and I watched as the two of them laughed and re-watched.  They were two peas in a pod...walking alongside each other through the highs and lows of growing up.  They shared the same quirky sense of humour, love of big air and big trucks, and a faith that there was something more to life than the here and now.

Their friendship had a comfortable kind of honesty.  It gave each of them permission to be and encouragement to grow into who they were. A person to celebrate the extraordinary and the everyday and a person to lean on when the going got tough.  I admired the simplicity of their just being there for each other.

I was teaching music at the time and I wanted to make some magnets to teach the kids about how different kinds of notes made the beat.  I had seen someone cut hearts out and draw the different kinds of notes on them and thought it was a brilliant idea, but hadn't had time to cut out the hearts yet.  So after a childhood full of cutting for my mom's kindergarten project I took a hint from her and handed the scissors and paper to Dan.  He looked at me like I was a little crazy at first, and then shrugged and started cutting with his tough fire-fighting hands.  That's the kind of guy he was--go with the flow and if you can help someone else out along the way, awe-some!

The wedding was beautiful (I didn't attend, but I saw the photos and heard stories).  Everything came together and it was what a wedding should be: family and friends coming together to celebrate love, joy, and hope for the future.

Fireman Dan

Two months later Dan was gone.  A firefighting accident sent those same family and friends and the entire community struggling to come to grips with that reality.

But a year ago he cut paper hearts, and dreamed of the future with a smile on his face and a guy on a buffalo on his screen.  Those little moments are what makes a friendship, a marriage, a life, and Dan's life was full of them.

Even though I didn't know Dan as well as some people, life as I know it hasn't been the same since that December day.  Each moment is a gift and any excuse to spend time with another person is a good excuse. I try not to let my doubts and fears keep me from leaping into vulnerability, from seeing a future friend in each person, from setting aside moments to walk alongside the friends I already have.

I feel so blessed to have shared a little moment with a man so well loved and respected by so many, who lived out the verse "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." John 15:13.

Dan and his wife on their wedding day.

I pray that all who were there to celebrate love, joy, and hope for the future on October 29 last year found a way to celebrate it again this year and will continue to do so every day.