the era of Greg Williams

Does a day go by that you don't think of Greg ?

The era of Greg and Sue is synonymous with our child rearing years.  He passed away before Harrison was even a year old - hopefully we had learned enough by then - but we have really had to wing it with that kid.

He was such a GOOD guy.  The best.  Crap..why did he have to die.  I miss him so much.

Would Kevin think this was a inappropriate/odd thing for me to write about ?  No, because he feels the exact same way..probably even more so.  And Sue ?  Who knows how she handles this massive loss.  Sounds like this just happened last week instead of 13 years ago.

He was THAT wonderful a person.

Not that he was perfect, not that he didn't have flaws, not that he didn't wear nerdy clothes sometimes but it was the whole package - including these things- that was just him.  And that was certainly good enough.  It was so easy to overlook any "off" item. He somehow made them endearing.

It use to really bug Sue when people would comment about how Greg was enduring his continuous health  problems like Spencer W Kimball or Job. As if she would have chosen that particular path for Greg. He did bare it remarkably well.  But it was never easy or pleasant. I think of him going biking in the middle of the night to try and cool down or outrun the terrible itching that consumed his body due to the liver/bilirubin(sp?) malfunctions.  You wanted to take the pain from him..you sleep, let me ride the bike tonight.  You keep your dinner in your stomach..let me throw up by the side of the road for you tonight.  You rest..let me struggle for breath for you.  Don't glorify illness. Greg did the very best he could - and obviously to all of us around him it was Much better than any of us would have done, but still it was never pretty and definitely not easy. To me the worst part of those comparison comments is that it lets the sickness define Greg.  And he was so much more than an illness and how well he bore that infliction.  That being said, he was such a saint, and probably like the survivors of the Willie  handcart company would chose to do it all over again if asked to.

 I can hear his laugh in my mind and it makes me smile.