Goodbye Jordan Fowles

 I don't know how to write this.  I don't know what to write.  Facebook has created a whole new way to be social, and sometimes it leaves a person feeling completely blindsided.  On Wednesday night I got on facebook and found out that a friend, Jordan Fowles, died that morning.  He was one of my sister Sarah's best friends when she was a teenager.  They dated in college, but ended up marrying other people.  They remained family friends over the years.  Jordan and I connected as friends on facebook a few years ago.  We were surprised to find out how many similarities we shared.  My husband was a lawyer. Jordan was a lawyer. They were the same age.  We each had six kids, most of them almost the same ages.  We even both had daughters named Emmeline.  I greatly enjoyed Jordan's posts on facebooks and chatting with him that way.  It was especially fun to read about his job at google, which he clearly loved.

 As I scrolled through the posts on his facebook page, I just wanted someone to say it was a big joke.  I thought, "Maybe it's his birthday and this is some weird inside joke."

It just can't be real.

But, it is.

His car crashed into a tree and he was ejected and died at the scene.  His facebook page is flooded with memories and stories of what a great guy he was- no surprises there.

As soon as I realized it was real, I grabbed my phone and called my sister.  She doesn't get on facebook a lot, and I didn't want her to find out in some insensitive and shocking way.  She had already been sent two private messages.  My hands shook uncontrollably while we talked.

I've just been breaking down randomly throughout the day.


I didn't know Jordan well enough to write a lot about his life, but his facebook page clearly demonstrates who he was, how he served people, how he touched their lives, how he persevered through struggles and weaknesses, and how he loved his children.  The last post I saw from him was just after he returned from a family reunion in Utah with his kids.  He wrote "Home again, home again, jiggety jig".

And he is.

It's hard to accept the reality of a childhood friend leaving this life behind.  Too soon.

In thinking of Jordan's children, I can't help but think of my own kids, how it would be for them to lose their dad or me right now.  Their pain must literally be breaking their hearts right now.

This is a part of being a grown up that I have always dreaded.  Mortality. Death.

Still, there is comfort. Comfort comes from truly believing that life is eternal, that those who pass on live on as spirits and will one day be resurrected with their physical bodies.  Comfort comes in believing in the atonement of Jesus Christ and the power to be healed, not only from sins, but also from immense suffering and sorrows.  I pray that the comfort will eventually sustain those closest to my friend, that it will carry his children through the years ahead.

The sentiment R.I.P. is, well peaceful, but that is not really what Mormons believe people do after they die.  We believe that the work goes on, and I know that Jordan is not sitting around on a fluffy cloud playing a harp. He's working.  He's serving.

1. What is this thing that men call death

This quiet passing in the night?

’Tis not the end but genesis

Of better worlds and greater light.

2. O God, touch Thou my aching heart

And calm my troubled, haunting fears.

Let hope and faith, transcendent, pure,

Give strength and peace beyond my tears.

3. There is no death, but only change,

With recompense for vict’ry won.

The gift of Him who loved all men,

The Son of God, the Holy One.

Copyright © 2007 by Gordon B. Hinckley and Janice Kapp Perry. All rights reserved. This song may be copied for incidental, noncommercial home and church use.