I wasn’t sure if I was going to say anything on the sad passing of the Rev. Dr. Everett Lees. It feels presumptuous to say words about someone you haven’t been close with for a long time. However, his passing has been sitting in my mind and left me with a small thought on strong character.
Everett and I became friends my senior year in high school along with his other dear friend, Steven Anderson. We were all in debate club together and spent a good amount of time both in and out of school for that year. We were an unlikely set of friends, especially Everett and I.
I was attempting very hard to explore every inch of teenage moodiness and angst, wearing combat boots and trench coats and attempting to exude as much cynical toughness as a private school kid could. Everett was a complete contrast to this, friendly, jovial, kind, and open. My teenage self could have easily sneered at Everett as naive and soft. However, that wasn’t really possible because he also possessed this quiet confidence that impressed upon me that, even at that young age, he knew who he was and that he was comfortable in his skin, not a small feat for a young adult.
I went out of state for college and quickly fell out of touch with most of my high school friends. I cut my hair, chose more practical footwear, and slowly became more comfortable in my own skin.
Then came around the era of Facebook, and at some point, Everett and I became slightly reconnected via a tenuous digital link. That’s when I learned that he had become a priest, and my first thought on hearing that was, “Well, that makes sense.”
I don’t know many of my old friends whose character and temperament were so strong and fixed in their youth that where they ended up seemed like an inevitability, but it did for Everett.
Everett and I never really got back in touch outside of a few digital happy birthdays and a couple of likes and comments. However, I did keep notice of his progress as he took on more and more responsibility in the church and grew the flock at his parish. Over the last couple of years, I’ve read his posts as he had started to express his thoughts on how he would like to change the church at large.
Through all of that, that same thought rang true, “that makes sense.” And then, just as suddenly, it stopped making so much sense. Then all of a sudden he was in the hospital and then in just days he was no longer with us. I had missed his humorous announcements of pancreatic cancer, so those two weeks from diagnosis to death seemed even shorter than they were.
Then of course, we are left to mourn the passing of a man in his prime. I felt the natural regret of not keeping in touch while there was time. I also felt the sadness for his family to lose him so soon. And as we often do with the passing of someone in their prime, I regretted what the world had lost in what he could have done.
However, I have also had a second thought that the world was blessed that Everett had such a strong character in his youth to have allowed him to accomplish so much in so few years and that brings me comfort too.
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