When you live with grief, you are always looking for new and neat ways to honor your loved one. Recently, we were asked to send in a story about a friend who is dying. His wife is collecting them to make them into a beautiful keepsake book. The story can be an experience you had or a moment in time with them, something that illustrates their relationship to you. The idea is that when the stories are combined it will create a portrait of who this person was. It is a thoughtful, wonderful, creative idea. The challenge is what ONE story could possibly explain the entire lifetime of happiness this person brought. After all, how do you explain the brilliance of Geoff?
Tapestry is a funny word. But it accurately describes how Geoff fits into our life. He has always been there. We were introduced to Geoff as a four-month-old bouncy boy, whose mother came over to have coffee and meet Zane. His mother and I became fast friends, two women raising two adventurous boys.
They grew up together. Living across the street from one another, Geoff was a part of our daily life. The boys played together, catching grasshoppers in the field, counting how many glass bottles they could break before I caught them. They learned to ride bikes, play hockey, video games, and walked together to their first day of kindergarten. They were inseparable. They ran away together, got into trouble together (having fun in the discovery of how fast and furious dryer lint can burn!). They explored life fully with a gaggle of buddies included.
“You got a friend in me” is the philosophy of Geoff. Quietly teaching one how to tie their shoelace or drive a stick shift or face loss with honor. I learned from Geoff that it is ok to tell ‘skip the dishes’ to drop the food at the door and leave, because you don’t want to interact. I learned that a good shot of tequila can make things better. Although, he told me, “I am not a purist but that’s ok”, because I prefer chocolate tequila. And I learned from him that a hug says that I love you.
Geoff’s dark sense of humor makes it impossible to be mad and it generates energy where the entire room laughs. Even when facing cancer, he has that sense of wit. When he took me out for coffee to tell me he had a brain tumor, I asked what his fears about this diagnosis were. He said he didn’t want to lose his eyebrows.
Our families have shared the highs and lows of life together. And with each memory my heart laughs at the joy that Geoff has brought us. And I am forever grateful for the love that he has shared with us. How lucky we are to have him as part of our family’s tapestry.
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