Thank you all, every single one of you, for your kind words and outpouring of love for Ben and our family.

There’s no way to respond to such an outpouring at a time of so many emotions. It’s humbling.

Both Matthew and Elizabeth described a feeling of graduation...we’ve graduated from the School of Ben. He taught us all such important lessons: simple faith, kindness, trust and humor.

I have the odd feeling that I just retired from a 32-year career as Ben’s caretaker. I’ve now joined Eric in his second retirement...his last medical patient gone.

Graduation or retirement, it’s an end of an era for our family. What will we all do? Obviously we don’t know and that will take time. All we know is it’s weirdly unbelievable to not have our Ben with us.

But we all agree he was certainly a hugely amazing presence in our family and now we get to carry his humor, his stories and his love in our hearts as we move forward.

An in-person celebration of life service will be held May 8th here in Gresham. It will also be live streamed.

Here’s the link to the service details and his life story. You can leave comments on that site if you’d like.