Love and Remembrance
This past weekend I attended my high school reunion. It was not our reunion year, but we gathered to honor Mike De Gruy, a classmate of ours who was killed in a helicopter accident in Australia while scouting locations for a documentary he was filming. Mike was an award-winning cinematographer, oceanographer and environmentalist, and his untimely death was a shock to all of us. Mike's high school roommate, Lee, was asked to speak of Mike at the Alumni reunion memorial service. Lee is a writer, a poet and an eloquent person, but he was having trouble. Mike's wife, mother, brother and son were to be there. What could Lee say? Lee had written out reams of sheets of words, and crumpled them away, unsatisfied.
The night before, we had gathered in Lee's cabin at the hotel. We were talking about Mike and old times in high school. So Lee asked us, "What should I say?' One of us - I don't remember who - said simply, "just say how much we loved him."
In his talk, Lee spoke of Mike's many accomplishments, but then Lee said, "Before Mike had ever done any of those things, we loved him. That's the kind of person he was."
Love and remembrance... what I was thinking of during the weekend with my old high school friends. Love and remembrance make this human life special and worthwhile.
This past weekend I attended my high school reunion. It was not our reunion year, but we gathered to honor Mike De Gruy, a classmate of ours who was killed in a helicopter accident in Australia while scouting locations for a documentary he was filming. Mike was an award-winning cinematographer, oceanographer and environmentalist, and his untimely death was a shock to all of us. Mike's high school roommate, Lee, was asked to speak of Mike at the Alumni reunion memorial service. Lee is a writer, a poet and an eloquent person, but he was having trouble. Mike's wife, mother, brother and son were to be there. What could Lee say? Lee had written out reams of sheets of words, and crumpled them away, unsatisfied.
The night before, we had gathered in Lee's cabin at the hotel. We were talking about Mike and old times in high school. So Lee asked us, "What should I say?' One of us - I don't remember who - said simply, "just say how much we loved him."
In his talk, Lee spoke of Mike's many accomplishments, but then Lee said, "Before Mike had ever done any of those things, we loved him. That's the kind of person he was."
Love and remembrance... what I was thinking of during the weekend with my old high school friends. Love and remembrance make this human life special and worthwhile.
"And even if we are occupied with most important things, if we attain to honour or fall into great misfortune—still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together, united by a good and a kind feeling which made us…better perhaps than we are.”
--Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
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