For the past week my morning routine has changed. Just as I leave the house to go to work I stop by my car and pause to look around. I hear the birds and insects. I see neighbors walking their dogs. I feel the warmth of the sun. So I just stand there and take it all in for a minute.
I try to take the time to appreciate life a little more, because not everyone does. I try to be thankful every morning that I wake up to live another day, because not everyone wakes up. I try to get the most out of life...
...because Jeremy Steinberg cannot. He passed away on Friday May 14, 2010. He had recently turned 29.
Jeremy was probably the smartest kid I ever knew. He was our high school Valedictorian. Back when I was using computers just to play video games, he was trying to write his own operating system (it would be another 6 years before I learned how you'd do that... and I still couldn't tackle it).
One semester we sat together at lunch. I remember struggling with some pre-calc homework and jeremy just glanced at my page and mumbled the answers without even having to think about it. He had the soft voice of someone who had never yelled in their life.
There will always be one story that stands out for me. Jeremy and I drove together to a summer league game (ultimate frisbee) in 1999 or 2000. We sat in silence. All of a sudden I looked up and asked, "You ever think about getting a tattoo?" and Jeremy just looked at me. I pointed over to a tattoo parlor we were passing at that moment. He said he never really thought about it. We sat in silence a little longer and then he asked "You ever think about becoming a stripper?" I didn't know what to say. He just pointed over to a strip club that we were passing. It was the hardest I had ever laughed in my life. There are some things you just don't expect to come out of a person's mouth.
Since high school, I'm not sure how often I saw him. Jeremy went off to Duke. I'm sure we were at some of the same parties over the years. But after college he moved to Wisconsin and that was it.
If you're friends with him on facebook then go check out his page. It's filled with people posting their memories of him. It really shows how many lives he touched over the years.
Jeremy, you will be missed.
1 comment:
Thank you for posting this - the sense of humor that Jeremy had - those precious tidbits that just came at the right moment, that's my Jeremy - to have the honor to call him my child - my first born son, with the red hair that turned a beautiful shade of auburn - the boy who asked what is less than zero when he was 3 years old.
More importantly, the child who came home from wisconsin to see his family a few times a year - always important to him - a precious gem that lives on in our memories
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