The Nicholas Family
This is a (rather crappy, but handy) photo of me and my friend Nash, deep in conversation after a scrumptious breakfast at IHOP.
This is Nash's little sister Kaitlyn, who is just a precious gem.
Here they are, with Mommy, my college roommate Bethany, a month or two ago on her 30th birthday.
Here's a slightly older one of Nash, with his daddy, Nemo (and Elmo - just try to say those three together quickly!).
Nemo was killed early Sunday morning. He got up early so he could get a few hours in at the office but not miss spending time with the family once they woke up, and was hit head-on by a possibly drunk kid who was driving the wrong way on the freeway at like 3am.
Nemo was one of the nicest, kindest, most wonderful people I've ever met. When she came home from a semester abroad in Spain, he found 11 random people in the airport and showed them her picture; when she arrived, they each walked up to her and gave her a red rose. He, of course, had the 12th. He proposed by taking her on a limo ride to the airport, where he had a helicopter waiting to fly her to the roof of one of those amazingly fabulous restaurants, where he got down on one knee and proposed. Rumor has it that there was a bottle of champagne on the house, even if she wasn't quite 21. They rode off into the sunset, after the wedding, in a horse-drawn carriage.
I wish I could tell you the wonderful things he did for me, as his girlfriend/fiancee/wife's friend, but I can't do that right now. Suffice it to say that he became a very very close friend of mine, someone that I knew I could depend upon no matter what.
And now he's gone. The world is missing something. Bethy is a widow, a single mother, at 30 years old, missing her best friend, and these two precious, wonderful kids will grow up without their daddy.
I know we've all gone through things like this before. Somehow it's always surprising how deep the pain can still be, familiar yet different every time. The world stops - the world had stopped - and everything moves on. I didn't even realize, for these three days, that anything was different, that part of my heart and my home was missing. I find myself grieving for the childhood those kids would have had, for all the times they would have spent playing with Daddy, for the talks, the advice, the humor - oh, god, for the kids these kids would have been (not that they won't grow up to be wonderful, just as wonderful as they could have, but they'll be different). And what will Bethy do, assuming that (as she must) she will survive this? What, when the family and friends return home, and she wakes up in the middle of the night, and there is no one there?
There will be an account set up for the kids, when they get older, and all of us who love the family will do what we can (monitarily and every other way we can), but
I can't quite put words after the 'but', right now. They're too big, and i can't quite wrap my brain, or my heart, around them right now.
This is Nash's little sister Kaitlyn, who is just a precious gem.
Here they are, with Mommy, my college roommate Bethany, a month or two ago on her 30th birthday.
Here's a slightly older one of Nash, with his daddy, Nemo (and Elmo - just try to say those three together quickly!).
Nemo was killed early Sunday morning. He got up early so he could get a few hours in at the office but not miss spending time with the family once they woke up, and was hit head-on by a possibly drunk kid who was driving the wrong way on the freeway at like 3am.
Nemo was one of the nicest, kindest, most wonderful people I've ever met. When she came home from a semester abroad in Spain, he found 11 random people in the airport and showed them her picture; when she arrived, they each walked up to her and gave her a red rose. He, of course, had the 12th. He proposed by taking her on a limo ride to the airport, where he had a helicopter waiting to fly her to the roof of one of those amazingly fabulous restaurants, where he got down on one knee and proposed. Rumor has it that there was a bottle of champagne on the house, even if she wasn't quite 21. They rode off into the sunset, after the wedding, in a horse-drawn carriage.
I wish I could tell you the wonderful things he did for me, as his girlfriend/fiancee/wife's friend, but I can't do that right now. Suffice it to say that he became a very very close friend of mine, someone that I knew I could depend upon no matter what.
And now he's gone. The world is missing something. Bethy is a widow, a single mother, at 30 years old, missing her best friend, and these two precious, wonderful kids will grow up without their daddy.
I know we've all gone through things like this before. Somehow it's always surprising how deep the pain can still be, familiar yet different every time. The world stops - the world had stopped - and everything moves on. I didn't even realize, for these three days, that anything was different, that part of my heart and my home was missing. I find myself grieving for the childhood those kids would have had, for all the times they would have spent playing with Daddy, for the talks, the advice, the humor - oh, god, for the kids these kids would have been (not that they won't grow up to be wonderful, just as wonderful as they could have, but they'll be different). And what will Bethy do, assuming that (as she must) she will survive this? What, when the family and friends return home, and she wakes up in the middle of the night, and there is no one there?
There will be an account set up for the kids, when they get older, and all of us who love the family will do what we can (monitarily and every other way we can), but
I can't quite put words after the 'but', right now. They're too big, and i can't quite wrap my brain, or my heart, around them right now.