I'm heading out to LA this weekend, where I'm staying with my friend Kyle Kinane. He's the one who told me about the death of Pat Brice, an uber-talented young Chicago comic who unexpectedly passed away over the weekend. He was 29.

I was talking to Kyle tonight and hearing how this kid in addition to being a hysterical, balls-to-the-wall comic also just absolutely sucked the marrow out of life. Absolutely. A presence in the room, a force, let nothing stop him. Joy.

I was trying to relate, trying to say anything that might be useful but mainly listened to his memory of his last time with Pat and ended up crying myself.

Life is so hard, it is so hard, and the only thing you can do when you stand at the crossroads is either find meaning or let the sadness overtake you.

I tried to tell Kyle about when my friend Nikki's father died suddenly, watching her at the funeral, wracked with sobs and how I had never seen raw grief that up close and personal before. And then she went to the podium and delivered one of the most gorgeous, inspiring, moving eulogies I've ever heard in my life. It was about how her dad always lived life to the fullest, and so when she thinks about where her dad is, she thinks about him being in his favorite place of all: Hawaii, drinking his favorite drink there, eating his favorite food.

Because that's how he lived his life. To the fullest. Enjoying every minute. Figuring it out. Doing it.

And that's what we needed to do for him.

It's the only thing you can take away from grief, right? What you carry on.

Here's Brice. Funny, brash with laugh out loud precision.

And here's an email I wrote to Nikki several years ago. Made me happy to remember her perfectly graceful transition from darkness into light.

hey,

want to know something pretty cool about you?

i think my big gospel of positivity actually takes a major dose of inspiration from, in MANY ways, the eulogy you gave at your dad's funeral.

i mean, gosh, that sounds weird. but i truly believe that that was a really...unforgettable summation of just the cruelty, the difficulty, the sadness, the disappointment, the etc of life.

and then you take all that sadness, and say fuck it.

order hawaiian, and you live life euphorically, just like your dad.