Aaron Kafka

Aaron Geoffrey Kafka, 49, was born in Clinton, Iowa but considered El Paso, Texas his hometown as he lived there from the age of 6 to 32. He died unexpectedly on June 1, 2024. At the time of his passing, he was a long-time resident of Mesa, Arizona. He leaves behind his wife, sons, and grandkids. He is also survived by his mom and dad, two sisters, three brothers-in-law, one sister-in-law, parents-in-law, four nephews, seven nieces and countless cousins, aunts and uncles.

Aaron's unexpected passing comes as a shock to his family, friends and loved ones, who are still reeling at the loss. He was a beautiful soul, loved life and still had so much ahead of him.

Aaron was lucky enough to be a stay-at-home dad for most of his fatherhood, raising three amazing boys and later taking in a foster son. He loved being a father and a grandfather. He was proud of his kids. Proud of the men his two older boys were and had so much hope for who his two younger sons would be in the future. He was a new grandfather; he had an 18-month-old grandson and a 6-month-old granddaughter. He was so happy to be a grandfather, it was one of his life's goals.

Aaron was a career security guard. He was a brilliant man with lots of potential but preferred blue-collar work. It allowed him to be there more for his children and it gave him access to people and Aaron was a people person. He loved meeting new people and talking to people about his family, sports and most recently politics. He was considering taking his security career a step further and wanted to start his own security company.

Aaron was a life-long Cubs fan. He said he fell in love with them when he was a kid watching Saturday baseball at his grandparents' house. You either saw the Cubs, White Sox or the Cardinals in that area and it was Ryne Sandberg and Shawn Dunston who caught his eye. And he was forever smitten with the lovable losers and rewarded in 2016 when they finally won the World Series. That was a great day for him. He cried tears of joy that night. He was also a fan of the Chicago Bulls and Dallas Cowboys. Most recently he started rooting for the Arsenal Football Club. When he took a liking to soccer, he researched the different teams before deciding Arsenal was the team to go with.

Research, that was one of his quirky habits. He never did anything half-fast and always did thorough research. Even playing video games required research. A video game! He loved to play NBA 2k (whatever was new) and MLB the Show. Every time he got a new version, he spent hours editing the settings, each players' skillset and of course drafting for the entire league. And that's also where he'd start researching to make sure the skillset matched the real-life player. It was interesting to watch but also mindboggling, but he loved it.

Star Trek! He loved watching Star Trek. It's funny, his mother loved the original Star Trek series, but he never got into that. It wasn't until Star Trek Next Generation that he really got into it. His favorite Star Trek series was Deep Space Nine. Every night he went to bed he put one of the series on; he also liked Voyager and most recently Discovery and Strange New Worlds. The week before his passing, Deep Space Nine was the show of the night. He would fall asleep to it and 6 or 7 episodes would play before he woke up and turned the tv off. And then the next night, he would go backwards to find the last episode he recalled watching. Sometimes the same episode would play for 3 nights before he finally saw it without falling asleep.

This is but a glimpse into the life of Aaron. We would need a trilogy split into five movies and then a prequel to describe who Aaron was and how much he was loved. Despite his flaws, he was a kind soul and loved man and animal alike. The world was a better place with him in it.

Aaron, Joe, Arnina, son, brother, uncle, dad, grandpa, husband and friend. You were loved dearly, and you will be missed tremendously.

My beautiful husband, no amount of time would have been enough, but I am grateful for the 25 years we had together. Thank you, baby, for a beautiful life.