The general memorial thread

[DiggerDude]

Tomarrow is memorial day. For those of you who don't live in America memorial day is a day when school is cancelled and you are supposed to remember soliders who have died.

Anyway I was thinking we could have a general memorial thread were we simply remember stuff. It can be a specific event, a time period, a person, or whatever

For example I had an awsome second grade teacher call Mr. Anderson. He ran a film club and would show movies in class, he would also let us do class assingments in any order we liked which was pretty cool.

[lukkucairi]

my dad died 3 years and change ago...

I'll post a pic of him sometime when I find one to scan.

[Tunesmith]

When I was eight years old, my friend Zack Campbell taught me how to peel apart maple seeds. They were sticky on the inside, from the sap, so we put them on our noses and had little swordfights with them.

He always won, for some reason. Maybe I let him win. I don't really remember.

But he moved to California all of a sudden. I remember him telling me on the bus home "I'm moving really far away this weekend. Wanna come over one last time?" I ran off the bus and asked my mom to drive me down (he lived less than 5 blocks away, but I had a horrible sense of direction, and still do), but apparently I had a doctor's appointment.

I remember crying in the car on the way to the pediatrician because I was convinced that I'd never get to play "maple seed fight" with anyone ever again.

It was really childish of me, in a way. It didn't really hit me that Zack was gone until weeks later.

Ah, well. I kinda miss our all-night-pillow-fight-no-lights sleepovers, but its been so long that I probably wouldn't recognize the kid if I saw him :rolleyes:

[zenbabe]

I learned the best BBQ recipe from my gramps back in the day and I am going to make it tomorrow!

[Brynn]

I remember in high school this guy named Sidney who had to live in a wheelchair. He worked as an editor on the school newspaper with me. He was very soft-spoken, gentle, very smart, and people tended to overlook him because he was in a wheelchair. It was as if he didn't "count" in the land of high school. He had long hair, and hid behind thick glasses that overwhelmed his thin face.
He could drive a car - he had this whole system worked out with rods that pushed down on the accelerator and brake that he could operate with his hands.
But getting in and out of the car with his chair took a while.
Life was obviously a huge struggle for him, but not once did I ever hear him say an unkind word about anyone. Not once did he ever complain - not even about homework, a teacher, a situation. He had a nice sense of humor and it was always easy to make him laugh. And he always had the right thing to say to me when I was depressed.
The most arresting thing about him though was an overwhelming sense of compassion that emanated from him. I know he was lonely. But in my mind, his face will always be a picture of Christ. He glowed with grace and joy.

Whatever was causing his paralysis was degenerative, and I seriously doubt that he's alive now.
Of all the people I knew at that point in my life, I miss Sidney the most, and think about him the most. I have never met another person quite like him. I wish I had made more time for him to be my friend, and hadn't been such a stupid teenager. Back then, in the foolishness of my inexperience, I must have thought that I would be meeting extraordinary people for the rest of my life.
Although these faces below bear no physical resemblance to him, it's the closest I can come to imagining him as a man:
http://www.asseay.org/kv.jpghttp://www.naturesway.fm/aboutus/imgs/somaw.jpghttp://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Diallo-Gentle-Smile5feb99.jpghttp://www.allaboutjazz.com/albums/album34/Benny_Green.jpg
Oh how I wish I could have just one more conversation with him.

[brightpearl]

One of my best friends died several years ago, at 30, from cystic fibrosis. We were in school together and she used to call me her advisor, but she was mine. I never knew anyone who was more herself.

She died on the other side of the world, the same week as a beloved figure in the country where she was. The news was filled with footage of people wailing in the streets as I got word of her death, and it was as though the whole world was weeping with me.

Her favorite book was The Little Prince. I still miss her very much.

[lukkucairi]

Desiree was my 12th grade roommate and my best friend. After we graduated we had a year and a half of that weird thinking-of-you-and-the-phone-rings-and-it's-you thing that happens sometimes. Then we grew apart - I was in North Carolina, she was in California. It happens.

A very few years later (and a lot of water under the bridge) we got back in touch - I was in the Bahamas, and she'd moved back to Miami. Then she dipped out of sight for five months and when she returned, she told me she'd been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. That was 2000. She lived another 2 years.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/229/517771277_4fe25a8627.jpg (http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=517771277&size=m)

And this is my Dad. He died in May of 04 of basically everything in his body wearing out at once, but mostly of senile dementia.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/230/517771283_0b2dcf2a61.jpg (http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=517771283&size=m&context=photostream)

That skunk stripe in his hair is natural. I've always wanted one too :p

The lint on his suit is bad scanning. I should photoshop that out.

[lukkucairi]

here's a sillier memory for ya, lest this all be dead people and sadness:

I remember in 2001 before 9/11, I was living in the Bahamas on the island of Abaco. It's where my mother's family is from. Anyway, on this island there are sinkholes (limestone geology) that fill up with rainwater - closest analog of lakes we have.

My cousin, D, had heard of one that had been re-discovered off an old logging road, and she wanted to go find it, so we enlisted C, the son of our friend G, to drive us there - since he claimed to know where it was.

So we loaded up in G's ancient Ford pickup (I think it was a 1972 - it drove like a desk) and set off. What we didn't know at the time was that C was out of his skull on paregoric. He turned off the main road onto a side road, and then seemingly randomly turned off the side road onto a vague track that might have feasibly been a dirt road 40 years before. There were 12 foot saplings growing in the middle of it now.

C didn't blink - he revved the engine and plowed straight over the saplings, bombing down this non-road at about 30mph. It was a hell of a ride. We got incredibly lost. Eventually we came out onto a real dirt road on what turned out to be on the other side of the island in the middle of nowhere, at which point the radiator blew up.

C was a wacked-out junkie, but he was also a mechanic - I had a screwdriver in my backpack, and with that and some bottled water somehow he fixed the thing so we could get the truck moving again. About 10 minutes later we finally found the sinkhole. We swam in it.

These days they're doing paleobiological excavations there - apparently they've found evidence of Galapagos style tortoises and freshwater crocs in the pile of bones at the bottom of the sinkhole - 100 feet down or so. C's in recovery and doing well, and G's truck is, against all odds, still running.

[Avalon]

5/27/2004
My beloved brother and best friend, Jeff; the anniversary of his death was yesterday.


ETA

I miss you. every.single.day.