Kendall Fitzgerald wants a celebration of life while he’s still alive. Won’t you join him?

A peculiar flier has been circulating around Denver, advertising a “celebration of life” on Aug. 15. This “high-class” gathering promises to include “snacks” and “bubbles,” as well as some “joy” and “levity.”

In the middle of it is a man dressed in a suit, stiffly smiling at the camera.

That man is Kendall Fitzgerald, and he is not dead. In fact, he’s more alive than ever, and he wants to party with you.

“I am alive; that’s great. We’re going to celebrate!” Fitzgerald tells Westword between shrieks of excitement. “I just want to get outside and lie in the grass.”

The undeniably mirthful Fitzgerald conjured up the idea for a neighborhood get-together at Cheesman Park after battling with idiopathic intracranial hypertension, which causes increased pressure and fluid around the brain, for the past year. The condition affected his ability to walk, breathe and see, putting a damper on his new life in Denver. But the battle is over, and he’s ready to meet you all at an event he advertises as “respectful and demure.”

The story behind the bizarre poster swathed with hearts, clouds and an inquisical use of upper-case letters is simply a person trying to meet his neighbors and be inaugurated into the community with a swell time.

“I don’t have to focus on just surviving, because now I can. It doesn’t sound like an Amsterdam nightclub in my brain,” he laughs. “I’m going to just do what I always do, but if people want to show up and sit with me, because I’m newer to Denver and Colorado altogether. I’ve got a tarp in case the grass is wet. I’ve got a small speaker. I’m going to frolic.”

“It was just crickets and the Klan,” he says.

Growing weary of rural life, Fitzgerald bebopped around East Coast cities and abroad before landing in Denver around a year ago, but things took a quick turn once he touched down in the Rockies.

Around November, Fitzgerald’s head started to feel funny. His hands and feet started to feel numb. By January, he completed some testing, and doctors found that his spinal fluid was “off the charts,” leading to a manual lowering. Then, Fitzgerald developed something similar to wobbly cat syndrome, leading to him needing a walker.

“Nobody knew what was going on. Is it neurological? Is it mental illness? We don’t know,” he says, adding that he had to beg and plead for help from various doctors and specialists. “I had no one, and no one wanted to hang out with me, because I was a buzzkill. Walking on a walker is a buzzkill.”

A minimally invasive brain surgery was eventually scheduled for the beginning of this July. Fitzgerald would have a stent put in to keep one of the major veins in the brain open and lower the pressure and fluid around his brain — an idea that shook him to the core.

“I went to the library and asked for a librarian who could help me find books about death and dying and understanding catastrophic illness and incidents,” he says. The inquiry led to a friendship with a librarian at the Denver Public Library.

“That brought so much joy, because that’s how I grew up: at a local library with a trusted adult helping me through a lot of things,” Fitzgerald says. “She said, ‘Are you sure you want books on death? Because you’re not dying. I don’t see it. I don’t see it for you.”

Instead, the librarian found him books on “neuroelasticity and the power of the brain,” and his ventures to the library spilled into other ideas. Fitzgerald created an online “save the date” poster for his loved ones to send him encouraging words prior to his surgery. (This is where the funeral-esque clouds came from that eventually floated over to the celebration poster.) And, with his 100 free print pages and professional headshot, he put together the flier for the aforementioned party.

For Fitzgerald, it was something to look forward to. A silver lining on dark clouds hovering above him as he approached a terrifying surgery date.

The surgery was an overall success, but Fitzgerald is still rehabbing some speaking and motor skills.

“I woke up. Yay, modern medicine,” he says. “No more double vision. My eyes don’t hurt.”

But what about bubbles?

At the end of the day, Fitzgerald just wants to meet his fellow Mile High residents, which he hasn’t been able to do since moving here.

According to Fitzgerald, his central Denver neighborhood is missing the communal vibe that he experienced while living on the East Coast. Not everyone is chummy out there, he concedes, but they still know each other’s names. Here, no one “hoots and hollers,” Fitzgerald bemoans.

“Neighbors didn’t have to like each other,” he says of back home. “But you still would kind of know who was who a little bit, just to have that tactical safety in case it gets a little funky.”

Community and comfort are important to Fitzgerald, a man who carries around rubbing alcohol in case he has to wash away hate-speech graffiti that pops up on his neighborhood’s signs.

“If we see each other all the time, just say, ‘Hi,’ because, maybe, you’ve got something to tell me that I don’t know about,” he says. “I’ve always felt like people don’t like me. That could be true, but I need to go outside of the house after being locked up in it. I had to relearn how to say the word ‘spoon,’ and then hold a spoon, and stuff, so I try not to judge other people, because when people have judged me, it makes me feel not nice.”

“I just want to have some joy, bubbles, levity, live entertainment, meet people who are around me so that we don’t have to feel so alone.”

If you’re interested in celebrating all life (not just Fitzgerald’s), you can RSVP to the party by calling 720-583-5149. Or, you can just show up to Cheesman Park between 5 and 9 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 15 …. as long as you’re nice.

“Bring a friend, bring a lover, bring a frienemy. As long as everybody wants to be nice-ish,” he laughs.

Oh, and the bubbles. Why the bubbles?

Well, Fitzgerald can’t “consume the state-allowed cannabis products,” but he heard that blowing bubbles is a good replacement for smoking.

Bring the man some bubbles.