{"id":9408,"date":"2022-10-21T02:32:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T02:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9408"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:48","slug":"out-of-the-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9408","title":{"rendered":"OUT OF THE BLUE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was shaken today to hear of a childhood friend&#8217;s death. We grew up going to the same church, same junior high, and same high school. And Jay&#8217;s parents were friends with my parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t know any details about his death, but I am guessing he had a heart attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I feel for his wife and children.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jay and I ran with different crowds outside of church, so I can&#8217;t say we were ever super close. And it&#8217;s probably been at least a decade since I last saw him face to face.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, there&#8217;s something quite startling and unnerving about the death of someone your own age, especially when you have a shared history.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s impossible not to put yourself in his shoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tonight 54 feels both oldish and way too young.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was shaken today to hear of a childhood friend&#8217;s death. We grew up going to the same church, same junior high, and same high school. And Jay&#8217;s parents were friends with my parents.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know any details about his death, but I am guessing he had a heart attack.\u00a0 I feel for his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9409,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408\/revisions\/9409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}