In honor of: Jared Washines

When I worked at Amazon.com, I befriended an awesome guy named Jared, who I knew was Native American from Yakima, Washington, although that was about all I really knew because he didn't talk about himself that much. I always enjoyed saying hello to him and running into him around the office or around Seattle in general. We even belonged to the same gym in Fremont, so I saw him there regularly, too. The sad thing is that I just found out he died earlier this week, at the age of 32. He was a good athlete, smart, wryly funny, had a very winning smile, and clearly possessed many other positive qualities.

Now that he's gone, I find out he was a direct descendant of Chief Seattle, as well. He was also a writer, like me, which I never knew, and he was working on a novel. He was much loved by his tribe and family in Yakima (Toppenish), and really by everyone who met him as far as I could tell. The more I find out about him, the more I see how much of a loss to us all his passing really is. Here is his obit in the Yakima Herald Republic.

Another guy who worked closely with Jared at Amazon (in the Fraud Dept.) named Scott Parker-Anderson has been writing to us about the 3-day funeral service going on right now for Jared in the Yakima area. Here are some excerpts:

We are all meeting at the (Toppenish) Long House before dawn and will follow Jared to the cemetery...

We just finished a 10 hour service that was intense in length as well as content. It was full of singing and dancing, laughing and crying. At one point, we snuck out and went to the buffet at the casino across the street. It’s OK, it is his tribe’s casino. There were drummers, dancers, and singers, as well as a funeral procession escorted by the Yakima Nation Sheriff’s Department. Jared is in his tribe’s Long House right now and two of his sisters and one niece will be spending the night with him.

I do not think that we really knew as much about Jared as we should have. The community was so very proud of him, he was loved by everyone here. I guess that is not really much of a revelation, as he was universally loved wherever he went.

Tomorrow’s service starts at 9 or 10 and goes “all day”. I tried to get them to pin down how they define “all day” and they said it will be wrapped up with a meal at midnight. All this said, there is a certain level of calm attained from crying for 10 hours. It really does seem to get the grieving process out of the way.

Why should I seem shocked that a civilization whose traditions reach back thousands of years has figured out the best approach for the grieving process?

Link