The pain of this experience is very real and very deep. I know the deepest pain is being felt by immediate family and to all of them I send my love, support, and condolences. I feel like I’ve been permanently wounded and I’m not sure at what point it will heal. I’m sure with time that will come but the scar will remain forever.
This past Friday was definitely in the top few worst days of
my life. Anything that could come close is certainly before any of my kids were
born as I know they’ve never seen the level of hard crying they’ve seen over
the past few days. You feel fine for a minute. You steel yourself and get
yourself focused on something. Then an opportunity for your mind to drift comes
along and in reality you couldn’t focus on anything else anyway and suddenly
you’re back to sobbing.
From the time I got my drivers license and through my Junior
year (Gerry was a grade older than me) I’d pick up Gerry to go to school and
drop him off on the way home. Typically I’d hang out for a while and we’d play
tennis or video games or just talk. I’d say 99% of the time in the morning when
I’d pull up to his door he’d open his front door and give me a 1-minute finger
asking me to wait. Who knows what he was doing that he could open the door and
ask me to wait but not be ready to just come out. I’d yell at him getting in
the car that we were running late and it was his fault. I never did drive off
and leave him at home despite the threats to do so. I’d wait, we’d head to
school, have a great day and better afternoon hanging out after. The image
keeps popping up in my mind but now I’m screaming at him “Wait! Just wait!
Please wait!” and then I’m sobbing. I just think when you lose somebody close
to you, regardless of circumstances, you can’t help but attempt to rewind time
and wonder what you could’ve done differently. I know I’ve been doing the same
mental gymnastics related to my dad now for 30 years. . . wondering if I could
somehow go back and do something to change the trajectory.
He and I along with Jake Cantwell went to the Tool concert
just a couple weeks ago. It was circumstantial that he could come as the ticket
was original Ben Gehrke’s but Ben was out of town and we were looking for
somebody that actually liked Tool. I was pumped when he said he wanted to come.
We attended so many concerts together in our teen years I can’t really name
them out. We made the X96 Big Ass Show an annual event. We saw Morrisey at Salt Air (His favorite
band was The Smiths. Sidebar is the opening band for that show was a group called
the Smoking Popes. We liked their sound and I bought a beanie at that show.
I’ve used that Beanie as my main ski/snowboard beanie ever since up through and
including yesterday on the slopes with my son at Sundance. I thought about
Gerry and that concert every time I hit the slopes before and certainly will
going forward. We loved skiing and boarding together. Second sidebar is on my
older son’s playlist during that trip he played “How Soon is Now” and I pretty
much lost it).
Back to Tool. We met up for dinner before hand at R&R and had a great dinner and conversation together. Gerry and I weren’t uncomfortable talking religion and spirituality together frequently and we had a level of that discussion with Jake that night, mostly based on meditation and the positive effects it can have. We joked it was a pretty deep conversation to have heading into a death metal concert. The concert was great and the entire evening felt perfect. I had for myself been through a rough couple of days at work and remember thinking as I drove home how great it was to take my mind off things for a night and just enjoy being with my friends. I hope he felt the same. As with anybody close, if I had known that was the last time I was ever going to see him I probably wouldn’t have left his car all night.
We could always talk for hours on end. Mostly football,
music, politics, our kids. Finances and spirituality were frequently on the
table as well when different decisions points and challenges arose. When we
were kids is was mostly music, sports, girls. We constantly were discussing our
need to get girlfriends and who all the hot girls were at school. Funny to
think both of us ended up marrying girls from our high school but that were not
our girlfriends during that time (we never had any girlfriends as high
schoolers).
We had just hung out earlier in January during the College
Football National Championship Game in his basement with Mike Davis and Derek
Cushing. He was showing us his newly installed golf simulator and we had a great
night watching the game and playing a couple rounds. We had always got together
for lunch several times per year but this last year we had re-engaged in golf
and date nights more than in previous years. I was excited to be spending more
time with him as our kids got to ages we could go out without babysitters.
I really wish I could’ve been there more for him in that I
did not know he was suffering and certainly not to a deep level. As I move
forward and achieve new age milestones in my life I know it will be crossing my
mind each time that I wish he was around to celebrate with me. He came to my 40th
birthday and I’m super grateful he did as that was the last time I was
photographed with him. I hope he’s one of the first there to see me on the
other side someday.
Gerry. I love you man. Thanks for being a great friend and a
true brother.
Some great personal memories for me with Gerry in my life,
in no particular order:
Football:
BYU Cotton Bowl 1996. We watched this game together on New
Year’s Day 1996 and I remember us jumping up and down together when Omarr
Morgan had the interception on Kansas State’s final drive to seal the game. My
personal favorite BYU team ever and several members of that team are still on
my personal top list of BYU players including Steve Sarkisian, Chad Lewis, Tim
McTyer, and Shay Muirbrook.
Super Bowl 2000. Gerry’s mission farewell was on Super Bowl
Sunday. The game was the St Louis Rams with the Greatest Show on Turf (Kurt
Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt) against the Tennessee
Titans. It was the game where Kevin Dyson was tackled on the final play at the
1 yard line and the Rams won. A ton of us stayed at Gerry’s house deep into the
evening watching the game after being there all day for his mission farewell
and luncheon after.
BYU Las Vegas Bowl 2015. We got absolutely dismantled by
Utah continuing on a very long streak of heavy L’s. This was a fun weekend lots
of friends were able to come down together to enjoy it. At least fresh of the
loss of that game we weren’t too unhappy when Bronco announced his departure a
few days later.
BYU Idaho Potato Bowl 2018 vs Western Michigan. Zach Wilson’s perfect game up in Boise. Gerry took Clint and I took Cannon. We had an awesome time and I had discussed visiting Boise again this coming fall with our sons again.
Music:
Not For You Elk Ridge Middle School. Gerry and I along with
Matt Hearty and Brandon Clough had formed a band and had tried out for the
talent show with Amy Salles as our singer to sing the Cranberries “Zombie” as
the song. We made the show but Amy ended up needing to back out so we scrambled
and figured out how to play Pearl Jam’s “Not For You” on a couple days notice.
Gerry took over lead singing duties and it became an all-timer for everyone
that saw the performance.
Skiing/Snowboarding:
Snowbird- We loved skiing originally and Snowbird was our
go-to resort. I still feel like Snowbird is the best resort Utah has to offer.
In my 9th grade year I had shoulder surgery from football and was up
on the slopes probably way too early compared to my recovery needs. We hit the
tram first run, I took some moguls and ate it hard and popped my shoulder out
of socket bad. Gerry’s little brother Clark was with us and while he may have
heard some expletives in his life before, the dude had certainly not heard a
string of expletives like what I laid
out with my shoulder coming out of socket (and staying as such. I didn’t get it
back in until I was at the bottom of the hill). That particular day was a short
day for me with Gerry on the slopes.
Brighton- Gerry decided one day that we were going to learn to snowboard. So we bought snowboards and thought we’d be pros in short order. Boy were we wrong. Our first time we went with Ben French night-boarding and we thought he could teach us a bit. I remember being unbelievably sore the next day to the point I could hardly walk because we fell so much that night at Brighton. We eventually figured it out and became decent boarders. We found a little cliff area one-time on quad-Wednesday and he called it the “Rock Garden”. He was one of the first of our group to go off the cliff that day.
Career:
Gerry and I talked all the time about BYU. I knew I wanted
to go to BYU but didn’t know what I wanted to do for my career or major or
anything else (who really does as a high schooler?). One day we were talking
about it in front of Gerry’s dad Ed and he told me I should do accounting. I
asked him why accounting. He said it was a great program with 100% placement.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “It means if you graduate from that program you
have a job when you graduate” he said. “Done. That’s what I’m doing”. And
that’s the story of how I decided to major in accounting at BYU and I never
wavered from that decision. It did indeed lead to a job more than a year before
I graduated and has led to a great career overall.
