For Ben

My cousin Ben died in a car accident Saturday morning. I wrote this in honor of his memory. 

Ben lived a life led by his confidence in the promises of the future. 

When we were kids, everyone accused Ben and me of cheating at games, particularly at Settlers of Catan when I would trade Ben a resource “for free”. But here's the thing - Ben traded back a promise. The promise that when I needed a resource in the future, if he had it, it would be mine, no question. Some games I would cash in on that promise, other games I would not. It was a trade for his assurance that if I helped him build a city now, he was confident of receiving double resources in the future, half of which he'd return to me.

That kind of thinking carried Ben through most of his life. Ben often noted in our chats how sad he was that he was born too late to have been a part of the early Internet days, and to have missed the dot com boom. He was forever seeking the promising tech of the future, and pursued various opportunities with the never failing optimism that this next thing would pay off. His business major at Cedarville helped him learn how to articulate the potential behind these things more clearly, and surprising him by attending his college graduation - enjoying Lipton Brisk tea and a Red Lobster dinner before playing League of Legends in the hotel lobby together after the long drive to Ohio - is a treasured memory of mine. After graduation as he tried out different jobs, he attacked each role with the same passion: be it app development, NFTs or GenAI, Ben threw himself into the exciting promises of good things to come.

One future that Ben looked forward to was a future family. He was popular in college with many friends, but he always told me he was waiting for someone who was “a ten”, and when I laughed at him for being shallow and said nobody would ever call me a ten, he said very seriously that his ten wasn't based on physical appearance the way it was usually portrayed in popular media, but on a whole collection of attributes, and that he thought I should score highly on anyone's ranking list. And so, when I met my now husband and we got engaged, securing Ben to play the piano for my wedding march was important to me because I wanted Ben to see that I had found someone who valued the same things about me that he did, and for Ben to play a small role in setting up the promise of my future life as I embarked on it.

The summer he met Lisa, I called him to ask if he had met his ten and he said very seriously, “if she says yes, I'm going to marry her”. I think Lisa was the first time I saw Ben with maybe a little less confidence, admitting there was an if factor. Ben loved Lisa wholeheartedly, and the last time we spoke in person was at Lisa's baby shower before Jack was born, where Ben again painted a vision of a future he was anticipating with great joy. Jack is all his dad hoped for, and while I mourn the many dreams cut short by the abrupt ending of Ben's life, I praise God for the joy of the dream turned into reality in Ben's life from his five years with Lisa and one year with Jack.

And now I know Ben's faith in Jesus has led him to the final joy, that he's up in heaven hugging my dad and laughing that signature Ben laugh, and that while I'll never hear it again this side of heaven, I will one day hear him laughing in welcome, that I will see my beloved cousin smiling brightly, having achieved the ultimate future promise, an eternity with the Savior.