My good friend Kimberly passed away March 22, 2009. She had been battling a particularly aggressive cancer, and after the past few years it became too much for her. We had been close for many years since high school, and we had done a lot of musical projects together. Though she had relocated to the Boca Raton area of Florida for the past few years, we still kept in contact by phone, and I last talked to her about a month and a half ago. Shortly after that conversation, she entered the hospital only to find that the cancer had spread. I will miss her a lot.

I have a lot of memories that come to mind, and perhaps the fondest is of the summer after we graduated from high school and I talked her into helping me record my "rock opera" The Travels of Duncan (Or Tales of Misguided Knighthood) where she sang the part of the alluring Elena. I sang the part of Duncan, a waffling and wimpy knight wannabe, and our mutual friend Scott Tronson played the parts of the evil enchanter, dark knight, and horse renter. The songs were silly, such as "I Dig A Horse," "The Dark Knights Tale" with the marvelous line about the enchanters "taking matters into their own hands and coming up empty handed," and the recurring "Questing Song." Kimberly even got into the spirit and wrote a song of her own, "Aye Knight," in which Elena latches onto Duncan after he kills a dragon for her. It was just good fun.

Kimberly was there through my marriage break up in 1990 and I always could count on her as someone to talk to. She always valued my musicianship and gave me some interesting projects, such as writing a bunch of instrumentals for a business idea she had, and asking me to arrange some songs of hers, of which all I did finish was "Bless Me," which she gave me permission to put on my Sacred Ground CD. I also did a version of "Modern Day Pharasee" in which she takes on the finger pointing so often seen in the right wing churches.

One thing about Kimberly that you could never shake was her faith, and she always looked at her life in view of her relationship with God. She took and read scriptures seriously, and often struggled to figure out how they pertained to her. She never took her faith, or anything she did, lightly. Even in the midst of her illness, she struggled with the big questions and as I read her website I was always amazed at her ability to dissect and apply scripture and her faith to her life, often better than I could ever do.

The song you are hearing in the background is "Bless Me," which she wrote and I recorded. I consider the song such a gift, and it so articulated her faith and her ability to be vunerable yet so strong.

Kimberly, Erin and I love you and will miss you very much.

March 22, 2009