Remembering Paul

We learned sadly on Saturday that my step-brother Paul passed away in his sleep. No explanations as to why, except that he looked very peaceful. Its all very strange to us because he was only seven months younger than me. His life was only getting started really.

Some may think our family deals with tragedy in odd ways, and we do, but our coping strategy is usually to think of the good times and humor of life.

We were asked to write down some memories we have of him and mine mostly go back to his adolescent days (not sure if he ever got out of that stage.) When he came to visit for holidays or during the summer he always had some sort of gadget or device which could be used to torture us all. For example, one summer he got some humongous squirt gun. So you had to beware that Paul wasn't hiding around a corner waiting to drench his unsuspecting victims.

During a Christmas visit my friend Amity was over at our house and we all decided to engage ourselves in a game of Monopoly. Paul had gotten his hands on a can of mixed nuts and chomped on them during the whole game. Amity referred to him forever more as "Nut Cruncher."

In 2001 our family took a trip to Mexico and Paul had the time of his life. One night he and our brother Daniel decided to sleep out on the patio of our condo in the lounge chairs. He woke up with small bites all over his body from the no-see-ums. He looked like he had chicken pox. He was excited to show us all his spanish speaking skills and talked to all the locals, all the time.

Paul always had a grin on his face, sometimes it was the pure joy kind of grin and other times it was a mischievous grin. We all imagine that he probably had the pure look of joy on his face when his buddy Scarlet came and asked him to go to the dog park in heaven. We'll surely miss him and look forward to seeing him at another time, in another place.

Link to Paul's Obituary