Jackson loves to play fetch.  He puts all the energy and enthusiasm of a 10-month-old puppy into chasing a rubber frisbee across the yard.  Jackson is a black Labrador Retriever who was rescued from a shelter at the end of the summer.  He had been run over by a car in early August, but that had not changed him; he still ran and played and slobbered just like every other dog his age.

Brent Johnson saved Jackson, and he is a dog person.   He had had a dog when he was growing up, and it was high time he cared for another one.  We sit on two white, plastic chairs in the backyard, talking about his life.  While I scribble my notes, he sips his beer and tosses the frisbee for Jackson, and it is those occurrences that punctuate our conversation.

Brent is 6’3”, thin, fair-skinned, with sandy brown hair poking out from under his baseball cap.  He has a dry wit and a relaxed way of moving and speaking that is Southern in manner if not in accent.  This is not surprising since he was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1971, and grew up in Texas and Florida.

Brent likes the South and in particular Jackson, Mississippi.  His parents were born and reared in that city, and his grandparents live there still.  Brent spent most of his summers underfoot in his grandfather’s florist shop, eventually learning to fill orders, and, when he was old enough, deliver the flowers.  And he has attached these watercolor memories of idyllic days to his dog by naming him after the city, as a reminder of more comforting times.  Jackson, a capital with towering pines and friendly people, has its share of big city problems, too, but Brent has a strong sense of place there.  It is one of the touchstones in his life, a place where he is comfortable.  There are not many other such reference points for him; he is searching for direction.

Brent graduated from Johns Hopkins with a degree in International Relations and a minor in creative writing.  He had assumed that upon graduation he would receive, in addition to his diploma, a set of instructions for his future.  Lacking any such guidance, he took whatever jobs fell into his lap.  He spent two years teaching at his old high school in Texas and one year living with friends in Washington, D.C., working for the Asian Policy Center, a small nonprofit organization.  The East was too crowded, however, and he had not yet found his vocation so he applied to several graduate schools for film, creative writing, and journalism.

Brent was accepted to the University of Missouri—Columbia School of Journalism and enrolled for the fall of 1996, hoping that there he would find his purpose.  One year later, on the morning of June 16, 1997, he awoke with severe chest pains.  He was able to drive himself to the hospital where he underwent several tests.  The doctors told him he needed emergency open-heart surgery to save his life.  Dr. William Wilson led the University Hospital and Clinic team through an arduous, ten-hour procedure.  Brent’s aorta, the main artery leading away from the heart, had torn.  During the lengthy operation, the doctors replaced his aortic valve with a mechanical one and a section of his aorta with a synthetic graft.  Because of poor circulation, his right calf swelled the next morning, damaging nerves.  To relieve the pressure and avoid amputating part of his leg, the doctors made six-inch incisions on both sides of the calf.  Over a year later, the scars make his leg look like a shark attacked it, and he can still only feel 75 percent of his right foot.

Reattaching Brent’s coronary arteries to the graft loomed as the most threatening part of the surgery.  The doctors discovered he had Marfan’s Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that gave the affected areas, including his arteries, “the consistency of wet tissue paper.”  When the doctors closed his chest, they did not know whether the grafts would take.

Five days after the surgery, he finally regained consciousness and awakened to the smiling faces of his family and friends.  His mother, whom he described as angelic, nursed him through that terrible summer of convalescence, depression, and exhaustion.  He has learned to sleep despite the noisy clicking of his mechanical valve, a continual reminder that he is flawed.  In a still, quiet room, the sound is unavoidable; the valve emits a noise like someone dropping bullets into the cylinder of a revolver, at the rate of one bullet per heartbeat.  Brent is very aware of his new appearance.  “I imagined the dramatic scars on my calf were the first things anyone noticed about me.  Though I had done no wrong, I felt ashamed.  I lost my swagger.  I considered myself damaged goods, not necessarily fixed.  Each time a woman has held me since the surgery, I have focused on the telltale ticking of my mechanical valve that announces - not guilt - but a profound weakness.”

As he fought his way back to take classes at MU, Brent struggled to wrest meaning from his experience.  He grieved for his loss, sometimes crying without provocation, wrenched with sorrow that he could not explain.  He felt guilty about these negative reactions when he had every reason to be positive because he was alive.  He has lost his sense of invincibility, and he is scared of dying, unready to face a vague and shadowy afterlife.

Brent describes himself as spiritual but not religious.  What he means is that he embraces the values common to most religions without following specific teachings.  He believes religion is about making a heaven in this world and that religious fanatics miss the point.  He does not want to die without doing his part to build that heaven.

As much as he desires to shape a paradise, Brent is unsure how to go about it.  He will finish his classes this May and spend the following year working on a project for his Master’s degree.  Then he must face not a life-threatening challenge but a life-defining choice.  He will write—what, where, and for whom he is not certain—but he will write.  As articulate as he can be about his past and present, Brent fumbles for words when describing his future.  Ultimately he wants to “do magazine work,” maybe editing features or writing a column.  Still, even this goal is sketchy.  He knows he loves writing; it is what led him to journalism school.  He hopes devotion to his muse, renewed through his struggle for life, will guide him to his destiny.

Over a year after that horrible June morning, Brent is changed and unchanged.  “A battle is being waged between my former self, who insists nothing is that different, and my new self, who knows everything has changed.”  He has a new appreciation for life that only its near loss can provide, but the spit and polish has been knocked off.  He has learned something that few of us ever understand and writes: “Who we are is so strongly defined by the bodies we occupy, and yet we are desperately and gloriously separate from them.”  At the same time, this traumatic experience has not sharpened his goals or helped him chart a path for his future, and he is unable to relate what he has learned.  Brent expects this newfound knowledge of his mortality to lead him into wisdom in one sudden epiphany.  He does not seem to know that wisdom creeps softly and that he has already grown wiser.  He understands how fragile and precious life is, something we often do not comprehend until those last few grains of sand are slipping through the hourglass.

Jackson, his dog, plays a part in all of this.  He is at once a lovable pet and a link to Brent’s childhood and a living symbol of what he can and should be: vibrant, joyful, and enthusiastic.  Jackson helps give Brent balance, gives him something immediate to love and care for.  That irrepressible puppy keeps Brent from slipping into cynicism and keeps at bay the bitterness he sometimes feels.

We continue to talk about his life; I have the impression that he deems most of it trivial.  He shares details about his favorite baseball team, the Texas Rangers, and a story of falling off a horse at summer camp, but he was still so embroiled in his life-changing experience, brought near again by my questions, that nothing else seemed important.  Time and distance will bring perspective and, hopefully, wisdom and direction.  We sat quietly in the hot afternoon sun, each musing on the past as sweat trickled down our foreheads.  He tossed the frisbee for Jackson one last time, and I gathered up my things.  As I drew near to shake his hand in thanks, I heard a faint metallic clicking emanating from his chest, an audible and constant reminder of the transience of life.  The sound is suffused with meaning for Brent, a sound of past tribulations, present triumphs, and future possibilities.
 

[In the spring of 1999, Brent Johnson passed away.]