Another reality check

Once again I have been reminded how short and unpredictable life can be. A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine passed away in a boating accident. He was 29 and strong as an ox. Hard to wrap your brain around him being gone....especially since he's still swimming around somewhere out in the deep blue sea. j/k he is probably riding motorcycles in heaven, doing any trick he desires without a helmet or the risk of getting hurt.





Chris and I met freshman year of highschool. I had broken my leg three days before I started highschool and had to have surgery to fix it. I was on crutches and was moved from a PE class to a health class since I couldn't participate.




In true chris fashion, he was the first one to approach me, asking me how I was doing and what surgery I had received. He then tells me that he had the same surgery on his femur and that he has a scar too and proceeds to pull his pants down and show me his ass, which was sporting a very large scar.



A booooy just showed me his ass! I was VERY innocent and he was not.

Anyhow, we've had our ups and downs since then. He was THE hot guy in highschool and had a great personality to boot. His head got a little too big....so I backed off of our friendship because he needed to learn a lesson....lol.



My senior year in high school I spent every evening over at his house. My mom thought he was my boyfriend, but this was far from the case! We were from 'different sides of the tracks' and just talked about our experiences and how different they were. He had a great dad, but no one to mentor him on what to do after high school. I had great parents, and they fully expected me to go to college and get a degree and made sure I did whatever needed to be done to make that happen. He was the hot guy in highschool who dated all the pretty girls. I was the fat girl in highschool who never kissed anyone....

He was truly interested in my experience of going through high school as the fat girl. What other super popular, hot guy in highschool does that? (Finn does on glee but that's not real life!).

We developed a deep friendship that year that has stuck ever since. He visited me in college and we took road trips to visit other friends together. We made some great memories. But our friendship really did lie in the philosophical, hours long, conversations that we had. I would try ground him and his super ego and he would do his best to make me see all the good things about myself.


Spring break 2003, North Reddington, FL

No matter how diverged our lives grew, we still came back to those long phone converstations.

In the last converstation we had, I was telling him about how busy I was finishing my doctorate. His response "Please tell me that are you smiling everyday?". I am, and I was, I reassured him. Then he told me I better get out and kick some butt with all these degrees I have now!



I always knew he was something special. But in his death, like so many others, we have really reflected on his life and how amazing he was.

A facebook page was started after his death. Hundreds of people have left messages about how Chris touched their lives in a positive way. Very detailed stories about him reaching out to people in their darkest moments. He truly saw the good in everyone, and made sure they saw it in themselves.



Initially, I thought that this somehow dimished how special Chris made me feel, but have come to realize how lucky I was to have been a part of such a special person's life.

He was a hopeless romantic, a dare devil, loved his family fiercly, a believer, a man-whore (haha!), a lover of life , a beautiful person, inside and out.....he was my dear friend and I am going to miss him somthin awful...