Daniel Jorgensen

It is an impossible task to distill my thoughts about my brother's life into a few short paragraphs or pages. Especially when severely handicapped by the grief from his death. But he was a very special human being so I will try to convey some key characteristics that were the best of him. It will help to start at the beginning. We were brought up in a military family which meant that we moved, like clockwork, to a different state or country every 2-3 years. For Dan, that meant after his birth in Colorado, he saw Michigan, Florida, Japan, California, Alabama, Washington DC and Germany - all before graduating from high school. I think that growing up in all these locations and cultures instilled a sense of adventure and curiosity that stayed with him throughout his life. The best examples of this adventurous spirit are his year-long overland trip from Germany to Thailand after getting out the Army, his multiple trips back to India after discovering Buddhism and finally traveling through the Southwest with his beloved pop-up camper in his later years. I will cherish for the rest of my days our trips together to Death Valley and to southern Utah to run the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands and then to run the Green River through Desolation Canyon. Dan's spirituality, as evidenced by his deep faith in Buddhism, also had deep roots in his background because, while we were raised in a military family, our parents were also very spiritual. Our father was a chaplain during his military career and then became a student, scholar and professor of comparative religion after he retired. He preferred to see the positive things that were shared across the great religions, not their poisonous differences. To his everlasting credit, our father never pushed back on Dan's commitment to Buddhism. Perhaps because we moved so frequently, our parents were also extremely family oriented which I think left an indelible imprint on Dan when it was his turn to be a father. He and his first wife, Sybil, could have had an acrimonious divorce which might have impacted their son Patrick in a myriad of negative ways. Instead, they chose to be partners in raising him. To me, Dan's commitment to ‘being there' for Patrick is his single greatest achievement. There are several things about Dan that our family background cannot explain: shopping and driving. Dan was ultra-intelligent but had real difficulties making up his mind. Some would call it analysis paralysis. Regardless of what you call it, trust me when I tell you that going shopping with him was a seriously painful thing. I swore off it about 10 years ago and shoe shopping in particular long before that. Like shopping, he was also ‘challenged' by driving. He was a poster child for the theory that slow driving is as risky as fast driving. I hope he is now thanking his guardian angels because it is a miracle that he never had a serious crash. There are many things I will miss about Dan but his sense of humor is at the top of that list. Our Scandinavian blood lines tended to hide it, but Dan possessed a fine sense of dry humor, especially when lubricated by a beer or two. Once it got rolling, his laugh was infectious. I don't have the words to describe how much I shall miss hearing it. Nor do I have the words to express how much I miss him already. I think about you every day brother. No matter what god is watching over you now, I pray that his or her peace is upon you.