Marking a Life

[kyle in Paris wearing dreads and anti-flag shirt, june 2004; is this at joan's family's home? this might be joan and her mother? who is taking the photo?]


gearey and i met at Advent Bronze & Granite and saw the marker. it is simple. dignified. tasteful. beautiful. we should go into the marker design business.

it will be delivered to Forest Lawn this week. then in "first come, first served" order, the marker will be placed on kyle's grave in the Abiding Love section. you won't have to search around or visit someone else by mistake any more.

gearey selected the quote, "It is a better thing to travel hopefully than to arrive." and miranda and i agreed wholeheartedly. by robert louis stevenson, my favorite poet as a child. i read child's garden of verses to the kids. last memorial day, when kyle was home, he patiently looked at my slides of Edinburgh, including a couple of the outside of Writers' Museum, where RLS and Sir Walter Scott and Robbie Burns are honored.

i was rummaging in ky's top drawer the other day. (of course i haven't gotten to the point of being able to sort his things yet.) in it were cards from gearey and i, including the ones which each held 1 of 2 pieces of a puzzle which, put together, held a promise of an airline ticket to a destination of kyle's choice. kyle was working hard at saving trip money and looking ahead to his travels.

i came across a letter gearey had sent kyle to one of his San Francisco addresses following kyle's trip to France in June of 2004. gearey posted it from Amsterdam. kyle had held onto it and even had it put away in his drawer. in it gearey wrote, "Taking off to a strange country, with only a passing acquaintance with a couple of people, not speaking a word of the language--all this completely on your own--took more than guts. It also took a deep and sincere desire to get out and experience the world on your own. This is an impulse I can definitely relate to, and I hope its just the first of a lifelong series of adventures. Nothing shapes the way you see the world like traveling through it."

the rest of the letter is equally wonderful. gear writes how proud he is of ky's accomplishments: finishing up his first year at college, finding his first apartment with andrew, getting a job to help support himself. over the next 3 years, kyle and gearey continued to get to know each other grown son to father, young man to man. they were at a good place when ky died.

although short, kyle's life enriched ours beyond measure. twenty two years of being our boy, of giving us love and laughter, of filling us with pride, of teaching us how to be better parents, of showing us what heart truly means.

we think kyle traveled well. won't it be wonderful if we all arrive at the same destination some day.