I’m sorry to hear you’re having such a hard time. Our Kurt was one of the most unique creatures I have ever known. He demise was in part due to his inability to access proper medication after a car wreck (not his fault). Please keep yourself properly medicated– it’s not a magic bullet, but Kurt had finally found the right cocktail of meds to take care of his chronic head pain. He was like a different person.

When he couldn’t get it anymore, he turned to heroin– not to get high, just to get rid of the physical pain & it was a downward spiral from there. Don’t let that happen to you! I hope you are talking to a professional whom you trust — if not, find one! It’s worth the effort & not worth spending the rest of your life under a black poison cloud. Everyone deserves better, whatever their circumstances.

Hang in there, brother!

Haps: I’m sorry you had to be there at the sad ending of Kurt’s story, Kerry.

The most heartbreaking aspect of this whole event is the manner in which Kurt decided to kill himself. I think the violence he did to his own body reflects how he thought of himself at the end, and that makes me very sad.

Thankfully, that’s only a part of Kurt’s story– an important part, yes, but far from the sum total. One thing we’ve all agreed on about Kurt: you couldn’t have had the Good without the Bad and Ugly. In his case, the Band and Ugly things in his life– his illness, his depression, his pain– informed a lot of the Good things — his insight, his considerable sense of humor, his consideration of others, gentle spirit, etc.

Anyway, thanks for the post, and feel free to contact me if you need to. Pretty sure BP has my current info.

Pru: Thanks for writing, Pru. Again, I’m sorry your introduction to Kurt came when it was too late to know him.

I imagine for all of the accidental witnesses to Kurt’s death– and it sounds like there were many– that there will be a burden to bear for awhile.

From what I understand, the train conductor hasn’t been able to work and has been in counseling following Kurt’s death– so please pray for him and his family.

There are many friends and family still deeply grieving Kurt’s loss, so please remember them as well. Especially his parents and his brother.

Kurt’s mom quoted from the book of Matthew regarding Kurt to me the other night:

“A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, until he sends forth judgment unto victory.” Matthew 12:20

Kurt was definitely a bruised reed, the “least” of us, and I am convinced that he is at peace now, resting in God’s mercy toward him– and towards all of us.

I did not know him in the least. I work in the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton and saw the police on April 10th at the tracks from my window. I grieved as someone told me they’d seen a body; I immediately suspected the worst. I wanted answers as to who it was and why and if they had family and if it was an accident. People kept coming to my window and I thought that it was sick and I was angry that colleagues would think it was some sort of circus show. I knew there was more to the story and this was a real person with real family and a real spirit. I could sense it, more than one normally would…so I prayed and prayed. And it’s kinda funny, now that I see the title of your song because at the time I thought, “What sort of devils had a hold on him?” And here’s my answer….

I searched online since then to see if there was a name to go with this man or a memorial service or something tangible to know of his life, having only been there at his death. You may never know the peace it brought me to see the name Kurt Hanson and then to google and see that he had an obituary, friends, a myspace page, people who loved him enough to share their food, their lives, their precious talents. I’m sorry I didn’t know Kurt in life, I think he would have made a great friend. But, thanks for the glimpse into his life and for answering my sprawled questions from a look out the window on a rainy thursday afternoon.

And you know, you’re right about your conclusion, nobody wanted Kurt to die. If a total stranger grieved, if Jesus grieves, I cannot ever imagine how you all have grieved who knew and loved Kurt. But, it is not in any way your fault or the church’s fault or a situation for blame to be cast on anyone in particular. I’ve seen too many suicides thus far–and too many of late–to blame anyone anymore. I continue to pray for Kurt, his friends and family that all shall be healed and blessed in the arms of God.

On an aside, I’ve seen you play several times at Wheaton and elsewhere, thanks for blessing the church with your gifts.

Yes, I even sign funeral guest books that way… We each struggle to fit in our own strange ways and I guess we each have to be who we are.

Thanks for this. I’d been carrying a bit of a burden around, having seen Kurt only moments after it happened. I didn’t recognize him, and couldn’t stop wondering who it might have been. The thought that I hoped it wasn’t someone I knew haunted me but only led me to understand that I didn’t, in turn, hope it was someone who someone else knew either. I was simply at a loss for what to feel, how to understand it, thinking, “What difference does it make whether it’s MY friend or someone else’s?” When I read the name, I didn’t connect it with a face, and certainly not with the song or you or the shows I might have seen him at. I wish I’d known him. I’m thankful for what you’ve so wisely and eloquently written. It’s healing. I’m thankful he had a friend like you. I’m thankful to call you a friend too.

Kerry

At his funeral, a story was told about Kurt being asleep in the basement of an empty house. He had taken in a stray cat which he thought was sick. As it turned out, the cat was pregnant, and when she went into contractions limped down to Kurt’s bed.

The noise woke him up, and apparently he delivered and took care of the kittens until his other housemates got home, even naming a few them. The owner of the house said that afterward he would hear Kurt singing the kittens’ names to them.

It was also mentioned that the animal knew the only safe place to go in the house was next to Kurt. Whether it was some aura or smell– we’ll never know– but that was another testimony to the deep vein of kindness buried underneath all of the illness and hurt.

Peter: Thank you for writing. Funny you should mention that passage in Matthew 25. Erik, Kurt’s brother, chose that as the Scripture reading at Kurt’s funeral. In many ways, it was a scathing indictment.

However…

Though Kurt admittedly existed in the fringes of many communities, I’m not sure there’s anything one person or community could have done. You describe Kurt’s own frustration with the “cultural consensus of reality” that he found wholly banal and unaccommodating. Everything was tried: medicines, doctors, psychiatrists, institutions — religious and medical, subsidization by friends and family– nothing worked. Even if Kurt found himself in a great situation or community (as he did many times), he would eventually have to pull up stakes and move on.

After his funeral, I had the privilege of talking to a older member of their family’s church who had known Kurt for years (or at least known of Kurt). He was deeply moved by Kurt’s story, and with tears in his eyes, asked me about Kurt’s passions, what philosophies he had read and about how the Christian community there had let him down.

He graciously allowed me to rage at him a little bit — that Kurt could in no way conform to the written and unwritten codes of evangelical behavior, that he did not deal in the edicts of American evangelicalism, but — like Jesus did — in riddles and questions. I told him I thought that Kurt’s funeral had been his “day in court,” and that he had won, hands down.

In retrospect, I can sit here and rattle my saber at the church and the different communities that let him down. The fact is: without those communities, Kurt would not have been who he was. It was not their fault that Kurt died. Kurt was also associated with some real lowlifes who thought the world of him. There was nothing they have done, either.

Erik, Kurt’s brother, made the point the other night that nobody that Kurt knew — from the drug addicts to the shiniest of churchmen — wanted him dead.

There have been many people moved by Kurt’s death to reach out the less fortunate among us: not only the poor, but the so-called “crazies” who can, at times, be psychic vampires. Kurt could certainly be one when he wanted to be. He talked AT me for hours, sometimes. Being his friend could be a real time commitment!

Rather than setting up more institutions for people like Kurt (which is certainly admirable), I would argue that an extra measure of patience with people in our own lives that are “mendicants” in their own right — people with clear psychological problems that need good friends in addition to doctors and worried parents, “weird” kids who obviously have no friends or bad families, etc. — would yield a far greater result, both in their lives and ours.

Patience and love are rarely turned away– we all need extra measures of both.

As a “limping” Christian myself, I can point to clear examples of how Kurt was used as an instrument of God in my life and the lives of others. His funerals and memorials this week have been proof positive of that.

Lots of Kurt’s family and friends have communicated how proud he was of this song. I hope that the converse was also true: that he knew how proud we were of him, and how much we loved him. I think he did, in his own weird way.

‘Bab: Kurt was a Wheaton townie, but he spent a lot of time at the college since a lot of his friends were there.

Glad you like the lyrics. It’s really a testament to Kurt– he was such a complex, layered and interesting person. We all miss him a lot.