Or A Few Months.
Some friends come and go in and out of your life with ease and you barely notice. Then some stay sometimes in the background and you take their perpetual existence for granted. If you don't see them this week, you will catch them later. Some go and you find yourself constantly remembering little things they did or said.
Some pass on and it stops you dead in your tracks whispering to them without opening your mouth. Joe was all of that at times over more than a decade.
I keep remembering Joe Clark. Pathetically, I only learned of his passing after his funeral. That's my fault for being out of touch and not keeping my old friends up to date on my current email address.
The entire country is in mortgage melt-down, banks are looking at forms of nationalization,
the entire tax code looks like its getting rewriten, guys named things like Madoff are making off with people's retirements, and Joe Clark will no more be behind the
table serving pizza at the 5:30 Cafe at Holy Trinity Sunday evenings, like he was for the last, oh-20 or so years.
Joe Clark was a humble guy- he was a eucharistic minister, he was an ever present helper in time of need, he was someone whose voice was a blessed assurance of everything's going to be just fine, because next Sunday night, he would still be serving Pizza behind the table at the 5:30 Cafe at Holy Trinity. And for a decade or more every Halloween the party was at Joe's house. He came to and hosted bible study home groups. He was a regular feature at the Young Adult Community (YAC) Jesuit retreats up at Bellarmine where he of few words always found the wiser most comforting ones. Rumor has it he actually started the YAC group but hardly anyone around now is old enough to remember back that far.
You wouldn't know unless you talked to him and pryed it out of him that he held a PHD and did some cutting edge avant resesarch in using underwater whale sound sonar to help the Navy. You wouldn't know he was worth a mini-fortune from inherited real estate and had a bunch of properties in the DC area he was developing into Bed and Breakfasts on top of his government job. He didn't dress the part. He was just Joe.
Joe helped out a client of mine once. She lost her job and I literally made a federal case out of it, filing a federal suit in Northern Virginia with another attorney friend to help get her job back and her back on her feet. Joe provided a home for her and her high school age son and let her live there serving essentially as a supervisor on the touch ups to the construction, and let her stay and manage the B&B until her son graduated from high school. Who would do that? Joe- a regular mensch.
Joe was that dying breed of gentlemen- the guys who picked up the check when hanging out with a lady because that's just what guys did. He always acted concerned, like he really was.
Joe would be the last person to tell you that he was a "Saint." His cancer could make him as cranky as the next guy, but he quitely waged this noble fight for over a decade in and out of remission and wasn't one to complain. Recently he went with his buddy Anthony to Lourdes with the Knights of Malta in their annual May Pilgrimmage. One hopes that while he apparently wasn't miraculously cured forever of his cancer, we all have to go and this helped him make his peace with the world and his maker at age 70. His was a life, if ever there was one, deserving of the moniker "Well Done Good and Faithful Servant." Let me tell you, Joe was a first class, A-grade, call the Pontifical Inquisition SAINT.
He didn't have his own family- the entire church was his family, especially those associated with the YACs at Holy Trinity. Please pray with me for his extended church family who is hit hard by this loss because he was one of those rare anchoring rocks that keeps one grounded and full of faith just watching him. There is another hole in the world.
I hope he forgives me for missing his funeral- and I fully expect to ask him personally in heaven.
In the meantime, if you want to help out with the charities that were close to his heart here in DC please consider helping out these ones found on his Washington Post obit/death notice:
Dr. Joseph A. Clark
CLARK Dr. JOSEPH A. CLARK On February 18, 2009 DR. JOSEPH A. CLARK of Arlington, VA. He is survived by cousins, Elizabeth Clark Thomas, Ellen Clark Pittsley, George Alexander and other close friends. Visitation will be held Friday, February 20, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Arlington Funeral Home, 3901 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA, and on Saturday, February 21, at 10 a.m. until time of Mass of Christian Burial at 11 a.m. at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 3513 N Street N.W., Washington, DC.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to Christ House (homeless ministry in DC) http://www.christhouse.org/ , 1717 Columbia Rd., NW, Washington, DC 20009, Cornerstone Community, 1720 Ontario Rd. NW, Washington, DC 20009, or Joseph's House, http://www.josephshouse.org/ (AIDS Hospice primarily) 1730 Lanier St., NW, Washington, DC 20009. Arrangements by Arlington Funeral Home.
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