It’s never easy to say goodbye to a friend. I recently lost someone very special to me— someone who played a big role in encouraging me to paint, teach at conventions, and stream on Twitch. He was the Mocha Minis Twitch stream mod, the first one to commission me to paint a miniature, and my greatest enabler when it came to convincing me to acquire more paint, paint more miniatures, and back “just one more” Kickstarter. Whenever Kingdom Death would release their newest miniatures or seasonal limited edition figures, it was a race to see who could text the other first: “NEW KINGDOM DEATH MINIS JUST DROPPED!”. Dangit, now those releases won’t just hurt my pocketbook, but they’ll hurt my heart when I pick up my phone to text my friend and remember that he’s gone…
I remember when I met him ten years ago: I spotted a quiet stranger crafting something interesting at a table during a ReaperCon HQ event. I remember walking up to him, hoping I wasn’t interrupting his concentration, “Hi, that’s cool, what are you making?” and snapped this picture with his permission below. “Don’t worry, I won’t get your face in it, I know that’s kinda creepy since I don’t even know your name. Hey, what is your name?” and ever since then, I’ve been lucky to call this guy a friend. While I haven’t painted regularly on Twitch as “Mocha” in a long while, it’s safe to say that KG is a big reason why “Mocha Minis” even existed at all.
Most folks knew him as Kevin or “KG” or “that guy from ReaperCon” or “that guy who does the chainmail”, who was always planning the next great prank on his buddies. He looked forward to the convention each year and I was so excited to be attending after being unable to be there in person since 2019. I last spoke on the phone to KG on Christmas Eve and we talked about all of the miniatures I’d painted on stream that I was finally going to hand-deliver in person. I purchased my ReaperCon ticket and booked travel on February 16th. When I checked in with him that evening to see if he’d booked his ticket as well, he never responded, which I thought was strange, so I assumed he was busy and I didn’t want to bother him.
He didn’t show up for the next few group painting sessions and the group started to get worried. When I called him, the number was disconnected. There’s an awful feeling you get when you know in your heart that a friend wouldn’t just disappear or change their number out of the blue, not without telling you— I knew something was horribly wrong, and in my scramble to find more answers, I stumbled across this veterans memorial page. I recognized his birthday immediately and burst into tears. While I desperately hoped it wasn’t true, the site confirmed my worst fears. I kept hoping it was just one of Kevin’s wild pranks that we’d yell at him about later for scaring the bejeezus out of us…
How could I not know? When did this happen? What even happened? Another painting buddy and I deployed our best internet stalking skills and she was able to get ahold of his father, to whom KG was estranged, but was apparently listed as next-of-kin. Apparently, he sounded annoyed that his son’s death caused him and his family to “have to come back early from our vacation.” Wow.
No obituary. No memorial service. KG was a veteran, which comes with burial honors made available at no significant cost to the family. When I was able to contact KG’s best friend (let’s call him “G”) who was in contact with the next-of-kin, I was told his father opted out of this, implying that he “didn’t want to be handed a flag”, that it was too much trouble, and further complained that dealing with tying up loose ends with his son’s estate was such a burden. KG left a hand-written notebook containing final wishes for the remainder of his belongings, which his family is choosing not to honor because “it won’t hold up in court”. Supposedly the father intends “to go through and inventory everything”— presumably to sell it and recoup some of the money he likely begrudgingly spent on cremation.
I’m absolutely heartbroken. And angry. So angry. I never wanted this for my friend. KG made his own family— he had people who loved him very much and to have his estranged family treat his death as an inconvenience and disregard the wishes of their son and the folks who cared about him— if needed, we would have helped financially in order for him to have a memorial service— it’s just despicable. KG was someone that mattered. And while grief can sometimes bring out the worst in people, it is very clear why KG chose not to be close with his father and step-family.
During the time before I found out he had passed, I remember waking up after a terrible nightmare. In my dream, something terrible had suddenly happened to my family and their remains were shipped back to me in paint cans. I was begging the police to look into it and find out what happened since there were no answers, but no one seemed to care about their deaths and no one wanted to help me solve the mystery, I felt so alone. I woke up sobbing, feeling this terrible, visceral sense of loss— I called my family, made sure they were okay but still felt so “off”. What the hell? Paint cans? Why the paint cans? It bothered me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that KG had been interred three days prior, like that the universe was trying to tell me something bad had happened to my painting family— hence the paint cans I couldn’t quite place. It may sound silly, but there are things that you experience that hit deep and shake you to your core, that you know are significant somehow but don’t know why— that dream was one of them.
So what exactly happened? We may never truly know. And honestly it doesn’t matter and wouldn’t change how I felt about him. KG was a private guy in many ways— though when we spoke on Christmas Eve, I remember him vaguely alluding to a personal health issue and I knew better than to press him on it. He never told me his birthday either, but I looked it up since I wanted to send him his miniatures on his birthday in case he wasn’t able to make it to ReaperCon, which was silly. He always made it to ReaperCon. My best guess, knowing Kevin, I think he received a terminal diagnosis and didn’t say anything to avoid having friends treating him differently. That’s the kind of guy he was. It pains me that he was such a great friend to others— the kind of guy who would always be there for his friends— but he didn’t allow us to return the favor. I hate that we couldn’t be there for him… as if we could have done anything in the first place. It hurts to feel so helpless in these situations.
In the meantime, the folks who cared about Kevin will be putting together an event this summer to honor our friend. We’ll have folks all over the U.S. that plan to travel for an epic outdoor party barbeque in KG’s honor and a celebration of a nerdy life, which we think would be more his style anyway. We plan to keep some of the traditions Kevin put in place, like road trip stops to places like Uranus Fudge Factory on the cross-country road trip to ReaperCon. We’ll continue to prank each other in his honor, and I hope to work with the Reaper Miniatures family on making a limited edition paint/paint label in his honor, though I’m not sure what we should call it just yet. I’m grateful that they’re open to the idea— I know Kevin thought the “Drow Nipple Pink” secret paint from that one convention year was hilarious.
It’s really a shame for Kevin to miss what would probably be his favorite ReaperCon of all— one that keeps his traditions and penchant for pranks alive and well, chuckling to himself that I’m standing there all pissed off and crying with his painted minis that I’ll never be able to give him now. I’m really mad about that, which somehow would probably amuse him. He called me “Fire Salt” when I’d get all pissy, and it brought him true joy to see me all riled up and raging without my usual “positive outlook filter”. Here’s a picture of the fire salt he left on my table one year at ReaperCon while I was teaching a painting class. I sat back down at my table and knew exactly who had left it there.
If you see me at ReaperCon, I’ll probably be a teary-eyed mess, wearing KG’s chainmail lanyard he made me years ago and carrying around a tray of minis that will never reach their final destination. Wherever he is, I hope he’s at peace. Peace… he told me that’s what his veteran buddies called him when he was in the Navy (among other names that he swore he’d never tell). Peace, Fire Salt, Kevin’s Chaotic Neutral (which perhaps are all random sample colors as a prank and no two are the same).
I still want to come up with the perfect concept and color name for him. To truly honor our friend, it’ll have to be something clever, mischievous, and highly inappropriate with plausible deniability— I think he’d like that.
