03-10-2007, 07:12 PM
Just around the corner in our past, my family lost a dear friend to us. Chris was my brothers best friend.
This is what my brother, Clayton, wrote about his dearest friend.
It is the one thing that made me realize that Chris was really gone.
Discuss:
What have you written about lost loved ones?
How does this writting affect you?
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A best friend of mine, Chris Grassl, was killed in a car accident 15 minutes after leaving my house early Sunday morning.
He was the most charismatic, humble, and loyal person I have ever met or hope to meet. He was one of those people who was always there for anybody who needed anything, and would willingly lay down in traffic for anybody he knew. He was soft spoken and preferred to yield the limelight to those around him as he provided constant, loving, and unconditional support from the background. When we lose a person we know and love, it is often easier to recognize how profoundly they have touched our lives than while they are alive. Chris's life is a perfect example of this bitter-sweet realization. I feel privileged to be one of his closest friends and one of the people he let his guard down for, to talk about anything and everything. I always saw Chris as a humble gentleman, a steadfast symbol of loyalty and camaraderie, providing the base upon which many stood at nobody's expense but his own.
As we walk through our lives, it is so easy to look up and notice everything in front of us we want to run toward, that we rarely take notice of the foundation on which we stand, the support beneath us. I always admired Chris for his strength as a person and how modestly he gave to those around him. Like Superman, he followed behind us, supporting us when necessary, pushing us out of danger, and making our world a little easier to live in. But Chris did not fly through the sky so all could see him, he did not wear a bright red cape, and he did not make headline news every day. Chris walked among us, helping many of us often undetected, camouflaged as a man in a Superman T-shirt like the one I saw him wearing in the last minutes of his life. I now realize that, as he was humble during his all too brief yet meaningful life, he will remain even more humble in our memories. Because Chris touched many more lives than we'll ever know, and many of us will never realize to what extent he has touched our own. It is the way Chris lived his life, and it is the way I know he wanted it to be, never expecting anything in return.
I am eternally grateful that I was able to see him that night, even though I didn't know that it was to say goodbye. He will go on in my thoughts forever, and I will always hear his voice quietly in the background, providing me with the unfailing support and assistance he always did. He really was...Superman.
Take care, buddy, I'll miss ya.
-Clayton
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