Karen Katoske: I thank God that I knew Jos. He illuminated my dental room whenever he walked in and when he walked out he left a great deal of joy in the room that I carried with me the rest of the day. We have thousands of patients and I know thousands of people in my work with Amistad in the Third World, but I never did meet anyone like your Jos. He was a true Singing Heart.

The impression he left with me was that there was no one who wasn't worth getting to know, and nothing in the world that wasn't worth learning about. He should have had 150 years to fulfill the innumerable things he could have contributed to the world. Memories are comforting but they are but a gray shadow of what should have been.

I was thinking about Jos today, remembering how he saw the world, though the lightest, most lovely, lens of humor. But paradoxically his way was more often than not the deepest way; for Jos's way guides us all from taking ourselves too seriously, away from self centeredness, from despair even. I remember him for that and thank him for that.