It was a most unusual memorial service — a celebration of strangers. They were strangers, not to each other, but to the family that had suffered the loss. They came by invitation, not by name. Their invitation was a poster in the window of a Starbucks store.

The man who died was only 28. He had suffered a serious automobile accident when he was 13 that left him disabled due to a severe brain injury. Through a number of years of rehabilitation, he had worked his way to where he could fend for himself, as long as he kept to his meds, and he had the loving supervision of a father and sister who saw him daily.

But he also had a number of friends beside his family down at the local Starbucks where he would spend a good part of every day hanging out. So even though the funeral service was going to be held a week later in another part of the country where most of the family resided, the father wanted to have something special for this group of people he knew about, but did not know personally — some way to say thank you and let them say good-bye. So he printed a poster of his son that announced a celebration of his life to be held at a nearby restaurant, and waited to see what would happen. Over fifty people showed up. “I don’t know most of these people,” the father told me. “They are all my son’s friends.”

It was an eclectic group. Among them were a few retired folks, a couple veterans, a woman in an automated wheel chair who wheeled herself five miles every day to be there, and some younger people who had simply come to know the deceased because he spent close to six hours a day at a certain table that was pretty much reserved for him and his friends. And these were dear friends — beautiful people who obviously loved him and enjoyed his company.

I had the remarkable privilege of attending this event, and whenever I think back on it, it makes me ask myself: do I have a place where, if I died, they could put up a poster about me and a whole group of folks would show up? Where, in the marketplace of people and ideas, are my friends? What have I done to cultivate a place in this world with relationships that count for something? This young man, with short of a fully functioning brain, has done better than I have.

I found out that on the day of his death, when his friends inquired as to why he wasn’t there and found out the unfortunate news, they turned a chair upside down at “his table” and put a sign there: “Good bye, Troy; we’ll miss you.” And as the day wore on, a number of people set flowers there to remember him.