Obituary of Jeremiah Maalis

Jeremiah Maalis September 29th, 1980 - April 21st, 2013 Jeremiah was a handsome young man of exceptional intelligence, sensitive, articulate and independently strong-minded, with a burning curiosity about the world and all it had to offer. Joy then came in the form of camping trips, fishing expeditions, and the adventures he sought out in those childhood years, where he began a love affair with nature that stayed with him through his final days. He was naturally artistic, excelled in science, and at the age of thirteen won a scholarship to Lake Forest Academy, one of the Midwest's finest prep schools. But fortune turned her back on this young person and all his promise, and had Shakespeare been alive today, the story that was Jeremiah's would have reached a place of prominence among those now all too familiar chronicles of tragedy. Just days before he was to begin his first year at the academy, his estranged father intervened, luring him to Colorado with promises of a re-energized father/son relationship, a prize his young heart was simply powerless to resist. Who knew he would be subjected to untold abuses at the hands of this braindamaged man, rendered so years before by a horrific accident? Who knew this vengeful father would lock him away in a juvenile home for boys, hidden from inquiring relatives and buried by a criminal justice system blind to circumstance? It was in those early years that he fell victim to this world's harshest realities, as drugs, violence and the seamy side of life came front and center in his world. Rescued by his mother's unrelenting will to find him, she stood alone among those picking up the pieces, holding him together when life, it seemed, sought only to tear him down. But the story had been written, the damage had been done, and all that was left for him was to play it out through its final chapters. Despite the hardships he endured for far too many years, he held onto a faith in human nature that was rarely warranted. Year after year, disappointment after disappointment, the indomitable spirit that was his sought out love and understanding, and occasionally found it, most dramatically in the form of a beautiful young woman named Michelle ... his wife and the love of his life. But even that small window to happiness was slammed shut before it had a chance to open, as her untimely death dealt him yet another crushing blow. Still, he struggled on, traveling from one coast to the other several times in his last years, camping when he could and making new friends everywhere he passed. He was a firefighter for a time, and California's giant redwoods held a special fascination for him ... so much so that he'd requested that his ashes be scattered there when his life was done, as they will be in a private ceremony later this summer. Jeremiah died quietly at home, in his sleep, after a prolonged illness. He was only thirty-two, and leaves behind a distraught mother whose devotion served to hold him up when he couldn't stand alone, and heartbroken family members who did what they could to lend a hand ... all of whom will miss and love him always.