Big Lovin' Easy-Bake Oven

For my beloved friend, Bill Stuart, who died yesterday. I am in Ulaanbaatar burning candles for you, Bill Stuart. On the other side of the world, Billy-Bill, there are candles lit for your insanely beautiful life. Ours was a bromance. We smoked cigars, drank Kickin’ Chickin’, and talked about cars, women, God and symbolic interactionism. I preceded you in grad school by a year. Then spent the next year learning from you. You proved to me that humility and a big personality are not incompatible. Your faith, your love, your patience, your silliness, your selflessness, your indefatigable, incorrigible, irreverence all schooled me. You once offered that you admired me. I told you that was all kinds of the wrong way ‘round. You wrote love on every surface around you, and on every soul you crossed with your smile. You loved on everyone. Everyone. And every now and then you'd let us kiss your head. I adored watching you become Dr B, and then watching Dr B become mentor, inspiration and example. But I also adored that, to me, you never stopped being Big Lovin' Easy-Bake Oven. But there was never greater joy, in my love for you, Billy-Bill, than watching you become husband and father -- proof to anyone who ever needed it that even the largest love can grow a thousand fold. All these people you touched, Billy-Bill, we know how to live this life a little deeper 'cause of you. God damn I loved you. Peace for all time, beloved friend. ..