Jeff Frost Memorial

I just returned from a memorial service for Jeff Frost who was my dentist and died of a sudden heart attack at age 50. I suspect there were a number of other patients there who only saw Jeff a few minutes per year, but were touched by his calm, smiling energy. I knew he had a couple of young daughters, loved music and travel. Today I heard from some of his longtime friends - all guys - that he was a Deadhead, a musician, and as a youngster he was a consummate inventor, philosopher, and fantasy player - building a perpetual motion machine and developing a shared cosmology with his buddies about an imaginary planet. It sounded like he'd gone to school at UC Santa Barbara. Indeed, we probably crossed paths at the Dead concert in 1974 when he would have been a freshman and me a senior. Would that someone could have introduced us that day as future dentist and patient, I think we'd have both gotten even higher. He was never worried about the gum recession over my two eye teeth, though he monitored it every year and once sent me for a graft. He said it would take many years before I'd have to worry about the loss of those teeth. It's hard to accept that his whole life is gone before those two teeth.