WHAT WOULD GREGORY DO?
He would fix things!
At our place:
- Doorknobs that fell out in pieces;
- Toilet fixtures that no longer functioned;
- Electrical items that needed some tricky rewiring.
Unfortunately, Gregory can not fix the grief and sense of loss we feel at his untimely death.
Personally, I feel a loss at his passing in many small events that stick in memory:
- His always interesting conversations, on topics ranging from the intricacies of how lasers functioned, to the mysteries of black holes, to the latest book he had been reading;
- Finding Gregory already ensconced in our most comfortable chair when I woke up in the morning, reading that book;
- Reading his emailed instructions and encouragement that yes, indeed, even a mechanical klutz like me could fix the leak in that toilet mechanism;
- Watching him fix Betsie’s morning coffee with no visible sign of complaint;
But despite all the things Gregory could fix, he can not fix the sadness, sense of loss, and grief he left behind in those of us still here.
A thought I think is appropriate here was expressed by the artist, Pierre Auguste Renoir: “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”
And so for many of us the pain of his untimely death will pass, but the beauty of his memory will remain with us.
Finally, to paraphrase John Lennon: “Everything will be alright in the end …….. and if some things are not alright, it is not the end.”
Rob DeWreede, Betsie’s brother