On this day, a warm cloudy Sunday morning in April, those who mourn are a mixed bag of people standing in a parking lot of a small church in southwestern Johnson County. Included in this motley group are thirty-somethings in jeans and ball caps with babies on their hips, middle-aged ladies in pretty dresses, old men with long hair and scraggly beards pushing walkers and not-so-old men with too-few teeth and grimy clothes leaning on canes. There are kids with quizzical looks on their faces, teens with watery eyes and people like me who feel a sadness somewhere down deep inside. You see, one of our own has just had a stroke. And died.

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