David Merrick

So there I was, 14 years old, at Tall Oaks Camp and Conference Center for church camp. Which was hilarious because I didn't believe in all that God crap. I went because I was sent. I didn't need to believe in God; I had Science, and that was way better. Science I could explain. Science I could understand.

Each evening we'd have a late service in the outdoor chapel. At each of these, one of the campers would give a testimonial. So I'm sitting there, about 8 pm on a hot summer night, bored out of my mind, packed onto a pew next to a couple friends. I remember swatting at mosquitos and thinking about girls.

Up at the front a girl about my age was giving her testimonial. Turns out she'd been riding the "Timber Wolf" roller coaster at World's of Fun and her friend had plunged off to her death. That got my attention. What happened was at the time the Timber Wolf only had a lap-belt safety system, and because you sat in pairs on a flat bench seat, it became a big thrill for teenage kids to try to swap spots with each other real fast at the top of the coaster before it plunged back down. See the Timber Wolf cranked you up about 100 feet in the air, then there was a plateau as it turns 180 degrees, then there was the first drop, so you had about 5-10 seconds up on the top of the plateau to try to swap with your seat-buddy.
The girl giving the testimonial and her seat-buddy had swapped successfully. In front of them, however, the two girls did not execute the maneuver in time, and one girl was thrown out of the car as they dropped.

So as this kid is telling her story she's getting all choked up and I'm rolling my eyes, because Darwin, right? All around me people are sniffling at this horrible sad thing that happened, oh boohoo and I'm just writhing with sarcasm, cynicsim and borderline schadenfreude -

- and then all of sudden something washed over me. It was like...well it's hard to describe. If you've ever been in a hot, sticky summer day and then descended into a cave, it was sort of like that. If you've ever been outside on a Spring day when a storm front is coming and the dead warm stillness suddenly becomes breezy and you feel the temperature drop, it was sort of like that. Or if you've ever been standing up to your waist in the ocean, facing the shore, and a slow wave pushes into your back, covering you up to your shoulders and shoving you towards shore, it was sort of like that. If you've ever gone to a movie in the early afternoon and after sitting in near darkness for two hours you walk out of the theatre into bright sunshine, it was sort of like that.
And yet it was nothing like that because the sensation was completely emotional and not physical at all. But something - and I emphasize the word something - washed over me. It was supernatural.

And so I just break into sobs, wracking, heaving sobs, and I stumble out of there and back to my cabin and I'm sobbing into my bunk and the kid who had been sitting next to me comes into the cabin and he's sobbing too and we realize that we both felt that same crazy supernatural weird thing hit us and what the hell was it and all of a sudden David Merrick is standing there and my God if he wasn't the most comforting presence on planet Earth. He told us to relax, enjoy it, and not worry about trying to figure out what happened. "Just take it in, and remember it." It was, for the first 25 years of my life, the single most poignant moment I had experienced. "I feel like I just got punched in the face by God," I told him, laughing through my tears.

David Merrick was there the day God found me.

Because, you see, it wasn't necessarily God that made that weird thing happen to me and the kid sitting next to me. But I couldn't explain it. And as soon as that inexplicable thing created a tiny chink in my Science Armor, God started creeping in.

David is dying of cancer. His Facebook wall has become a deluge of well-wishing and people pouring their hearts and stories out just as I have. "David has been there for my family for 20 years," and "David has been like a father I never had," and "I was so blessed to know David." It is pretty overwhelming to read. The sheer volume makes it seem like a celebrity's facebook wall.

But he isn't a celebrity, he's David. Humble, brilliant, weird, lanky, loving, brotherly David. And I will have words with anyone who ever speaks ill of him.

The world is going to miss you, David. I am going to miss you.

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