Gretchen's Page

5 years

2011-08-26T00:43:00.000-07:00

So, yes, it's been that, and she's missed. I still can't quite figure out what happened. It wasn't a conspiracy. She didn't get involved with something in Prague that led her to this. This is not the plot of a novel. It just is what it is, and that's the saddest thing to realize.

At least she's out of her pain.

I wish there had been a better way for her to get there.

32

2010-08-23T20:35:00.000-07:00

Happy 32nd Birthday. You would have been 32 today.

It's been a while

2010-08-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

Nothing else. Just that.

I haven't forgotten about her.

Happy 30th, Gretchen

2008-08-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

You would have been officially old on Saturday.

I remember.

2008-05-01T13:52:00.000-07:00

It's been over a year and a half. The strangest thing is looking at photographs of Gretchen and not really the photograph itself; it's her smile in the pictures that ails me to no end. Photographs are prisons. There is no single song, collection of words or amount of tears that can vindicate what happened. So I won't justify it. I'll just remember. I'll remember that it's a choice, to live, to die. Every second is a choice. To be or not to be. It's a decision and the only thing I can do is respect & remember. And I do. I miss you, Gretchen. I miss you beyond my own ability to understand.
“My dear it was a moment
to clutch at for a moment
so that you may believe in it
and believing is the act of love, I think,
even in the telling wherever it went”
-Anne Sexton

These photographs are from my good-bye party in Prague which was "white trash" themed, hence the attire. They're pretty funny, I love them.

Much love to you all,

Niko.

2008-04-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

Is anyone still reading?

2007-08-27T20:01:00.001-07:00

I thought that I would probably break down on August 23rd, and I didn't. I waited a few days.

A Year Later

2007-08-24T21:25:00.000-07:00

It's been one year now, but it still seems like it was yesterday. My parents and I took a trip to Alabama a few weeks ago to see my grandmother and take her out for her birthday. Granny's birthday is two days before Gretchen's but we couldn't do it the weekend due to the anniversary of Gretchen's death. We stopped by the cemetary and left roses for my mom and for Gretchen. It's still odd seeing her tombstone....Today was definitely a rough day, very gloomy all day....

a dream

2007-07-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

I just emailed Misha, and I remembered a dream that I had a couple of months ago. I thought I would post it here.

I had just received an email from a friend about another friend from high school, Dave Gallagher: http://www.davidgallagherfoundation.org/. I had not known about Dave's death. And before that, James Weese, and, shortly after Gretchen's death, another member of our high school class, Chris Carrelli. I fell asleep thinking about all of them. They were all friends, at least good enough friends that I had spent time with them outside of school. Dave came to a few parties at my house and confessed an ill-fated crush on one of my friends to me, with disasterous results. James used to ride the bus with me in elementary school, and would sometimes go with us to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I saw him around West Chester before he died. Chris was in bands, and sometimes sat at my lunch table, and I saw him at the diner after he got back from Italy a few years ago. I wasn't close friends with anyone else the way I was with Gretchen.

In my dream, I was in the auditorium (from which I was later banned for life) at Conestoga, and people were passing by, up and down the aisles. Gretchen came in, in her skinny jeans, a teal flannel shirt that once belonged to a boy we both liked, and her leather jacket. (How many flannel shirts and thermal long-sleeved shirts did we pilfer from boys we liked in high school? It would have been a massive pile.) She tossed her purple LL Bean backpack on the seat next to mine and sat down. She opened a can of cherry Coke.

"You know, Gretchen, our class isn't doing so well," I said to her.

She nodded, and thought about this for a couple of minutes. We watched people walk up and down.

Then, she looked at me, and said "Let's trade shoes."

I had forgotten about her penchant for trading clothes. Whatever I was wearing, Gretchen wanted to wear, too. We were constantly running around in each other's shoes. I remember coming back from the Downingtown Flea Market the night of a 70's dance. We stopped to pick Gretchen up at Genuardi's as she finished work. On the way to the dance, she decided that we should trade clothes, and we wound up switching outfits quite scandalously in the backseat of someone's car. When we got to the dance, she climbed up on a speaker next to the deejay booth. I was very proud that my black wrap skirt and knee-high boots were having such a fantastic time.

I wonder what ever happened to those purple 10-hole Doc Martens, the counterparts to which are sitting upstairs, unwearable because of the holes in the soles, next to a navy flannel, a patched pair of jeans with Tori Amos lyrics written on them in blue bic pen and a men's extra large Soviet army t-shirt. I can't throw them out. I think I never will.

From Shawn

2007-07-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

Shawn sent this to me to post on the blog:

At times during our relationships Gretchen was amazingly kind and charming. She was my first and third “real” girlfriend so there are lots of memories of her that remain wonderful. When I fell for her, I fell hard.

She was smart and talented in a completely effortless way and addictively energetic. People always spoke to me of her modeling potential, but it didn’t really sink in until I went to her modeling school graduation in Philly and she won top honors in her class.

Being with her was like existing inside a wave, forces and tides pulling you along. Then you’d look at the beach and see your towel was suddenly a half a mile away. She had that effect on me and a lot of other people.

There were rough times too. Then as high school romances often do, we ended on a bad note. A whole song of bad notes. We both acted immaturely and petty, as high school kids often do.

In the end, I’m not sure if I really knew Gretchen beyond the face she showed the rest of the world. I always wanted to, but perhaps she wasn’t ready back then. Perhaps I wasn’t either.

I still work with one of her family’s friends and had hoped one day Gretchen and I would get to talking again. “So much drama back then,” I would have said. “I spent most of my day feeling confused about how I was supposed to be feeling then worried about that confusion.”

“Yeah, I’m glad high school’s over,” she would have said, looking at me, studying my expression, listening.

“Me too,” I would have said. “We both turned out all right in the end, huh?”

And she would have just smiled that Cheshire grin, letting the words linger between us.

Nearly a year...

2007-07-10T15:16:00.000-07:00

I still miss you, Gretchen.

And it still makes me cry when I remember that you're not here anymore.

Memories from Sandra

2007-05-04T02:20:00.000-07:00

Sandra, the fourth member of the unauthorized midnight roadtrip to New York, just emailed me. She heard about Gretchen recently. She sent along the following memories, and photographs.

From Sandra

Sitting around outside of Genuardi's eating ice cream and drinking coke. I cannot remember if it was Christine, Gretchen or I complaining of PMS, but we decided to solve it by sitting around outside in crisp fall weather stuffing our faces with sugar. We bought a big container of ice cream and some cokes and feasted.

Gretchen had moments where she just seemed fearless. It was late at night and we decided to venture up to Genuardi's parking lot. We didn't have anything to do, nor know what to do so we got into shopping cart races. Gretchen was the lightest of us, so she chose to ride in a cart as we pushed. She kept wanting to stand up or put her arms out of the cart. She seemed so free and happy, like she was flying across the asphalt with nothing to hold her back.

Gretchen and her delight at combining Dr Pepper and Pixie Stix. She got carried away once and the fizz went up her nose causing her to spit it out and make this horrible snarfing noise. I think she laughed for about 15 minutes after that.

Gretchen was grounded but for some reason she could still stand around in her yard. I walked over to her house and we just stood there talking, as evening approached, talking. It was relaxing and I think she appreciated the break from being grounded. She was so often stuck at home for some reason or another.

After she made the scary attempt and cut her arms, we went out. Some guy, I cannot recall who, noticed the scars and asked her about them. I would have covered scars like that, but she proudly displayed them as if asking the world to question her courage. When he asked her what happened, she gave him this look that could cut glass before saying, "I made a mistake, and they are my reminder." I just wish this could have been yet another mistake she could be reminded of later on.

We don't get answers, do we?

2007-04-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about Gretchen again. I'll turn 29 on Wednesday. She won't, ever, turn 29. I'm running over the same questions, again and again, wondering how it is that things turned out the way that they did. I'm beginning to realize that this is something that I'll never get to understand.

You should have been here for Langdon's wedding. You should have been here to see Christine become a PhD. You should have been here to turn 30 with us.

That's going to be there, in the back of my mind, for every milestone.

We haven't forgotten about you.

4+ months later

2007-02-02T18:55:00.000-08:00

I was out to dinner tonight and I was talking about Gretchen and I still don't understand why she did what she did the night of her 28th birthday, or why she tried both times in high school and that time with Dave. I remember both high school times like it was yesterday and I can tell you about the whole day the first time she tried and my reaction when I found out she tried. I still can't believe she succeeded. I know my reactions the first two times. I couldn't imagine what Misha is going through...it's one thing to find her and being able to have my parents or Dave take her to the ER and it's another thing to find her and know there isn't anything left to do to save her.
I still can see the bathroom the first time she tried and it was worse than any horror movie I've ever seen. I didn't think one person had that much blood in their body. I didn't want my parents to have to come home and see the bathroom after taking her to the ER so I remember cleaning it all up....
Are you happy now Gretchen? You may be happy and content with your decision but you left everyone else wondering why, in pain and wondering was there anything any of us could have done to have saved you? Was there anything you could have done? If you were on your meds would you still be here today? Do you realize the pain you have caused with this?
I remember when you turned 25 you thought you were so old, well now your 2 years away from the big 3-0. What would you be saying now?
Why couldn't you have just gone to bed mad and woke up the next day and let it go.....whatever it was.......

A song for Gretchen

2007-01-30T05:45:00.000-08:00

First song I wrote after August 29th

http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=54752

2006-12-29T07:28:00.000-08:00

Been a while since I visited this page. I missed all the get togethers on Long Island as well. I admit, part of me did it on purpose. After all these months, I have yet to shed a single tear over her. I keep waiting for it to hit, and it never does. At the same time, I don't want it to. So, I "forgot" about the get togethers, failed to find a sitter for my son, and forgot the link to this page. I've even avoided getting wings at Hooters, since some of my best memories of Gretchen were there. Pretending it didn't happen was far too easy for me.

There were times Gretchen and I saw eachother nearly every day. Working, shopping, going out, and hanging out, all the while relentlessly making fun of anyone to cross our paths. Then, she'd disappear for a while. I'd hear rumors, whispers about where she was, but when she reappeared I never questioned her. Never let her know I had an inkling about what really happened. I figured if she wanted me to know she'd tell me, and for now I'll ignore it. The fun we had was more important. At least, it was until the next time she disappeared, and the worry would set in again.

When she told me she was going to move to Prague that worry was there. A lot had happened recently. Friends she was closer to then she was with me have left her. People I knew she spoke to about the darker, lower parts of her life, the parts she kept from me, were gone. Still, I bit my tongue. I wasn't supposed to know. I let her happiness over the move infect me, and I wished her luck in all she did. We exchanged ICQ's, emails, and she started her livejournal. I went and had a baby, and any worry for her fell into the background. Aside from occasional comments through livejournal, we lost touch.

Months went by, and suddenly I got a phone call. I told myself it was a rumor. A joke. That's what I wanted to believe. She's just in Prague. She lost touch with me, as we had a habit of doing. Nothing is wrong. By then, I was used to pretending nothing was wrong. Still, I knew it was true as I posted in her livejournal, begging her to email, call, text, ANYTHING. The confirmation was made, but it was still easier to pretend. She'll reappear, just as happy, hyper and infectous as before.

That's not going to happen of course. That's what needs to hit. I think I'm going to go get those wings I've been avoiding and craving. Look at the photos they have of her there, and maybe something will hit when I get home.

2006-12-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

A few people will be getting together at my house on Friday night to remember Gretchen. Please email me if you're interested in attending. (I'm in the Philadelphia suburbs)

megan_m_young@hotmail.com

a decade

2006-11-25T17:41:00.000-08:00

Hi, Gretchen,

Last night would have been your ten year high school reunion.

You were missed.

Love,
Megan

from Gregg

2006-11-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

Gregg wrote this on his myspace blog back in August. I asked if I could repost it here. -Megan

...

I got a call earlier. It was one of those calls that we're none of us supposed to get. But I got it anyway. It was a familiar call, which these calls aren't supposed to be, but it was. I stayed on the phone for a few minutes, walking around the house, trying to find the appropriate place to sit down and see where the conversation went. No place felt right. I tried the stairs. I tried my writing chair. I tried the chaise lounge. All wrong. I looked around and decided that there was no appropriate place for this conversation, so I just sat down in the hallway. Then I decided that there was no appropriate way to continue the conversation so I let it just end. Then I went where I've always gone after that conversation. I went to the Vale. And on my way there I thought about what I'd always thought about after that conversation. I thought that whoever I may see tonight, whoever I might end up sitting next too, they're going to feel worse than I do. They're going to tell me how sorry they are and I'm going to stare at them and not have anything correct to say in response. And whoever they are, however strange they may be, I'm going to be looking at them like they are already dead, and I am going to be glad for any time we spend together.

I think I was 17, I may have been 16, I'm not really sure, 16 seems right, they were complicated years. But whichever it was, I had already met enough models to not really give a shit when she told me she was a model. Okay, so what, I thought, but it was one of the first things she told me and I remember that. Over the years I didn't find out all that much about her. I found out that she was smart. She's one of the two people I've ever met who's IQ was actually higher than mine, so that'll diffuse any simple explanations of this sort of thing being stupid, it's not stupid, I don't know what it is, but it's not stupid.

I remember standing in the driveway with her friends trying to figure out some sort of explanation. As I said, I didn't know too much about her, so anything they could tell me would be helpful I thought. They had no idea. Nobody could shed any light on anything, we were just people in a driveway trying to discern the indiscernible, and so we let it drop and all just left after that.

Her mom told me that she was at Bryn Mawr Hospital. I hopped in my car and I headed over there, it was late, when I arrived there was nobody in the lobby. I sat down at the information desk and used one of the computers to find out what room she was in. When I got up there a nurse was reading a magazine and she told me that visiting hours were over. But when she sat up and smiled and stretched out her arms, the nurse went away.

I was cooking spaghetti at the Zoo over on Gay Street in '96. That was pretty much what I did instead of paying rent, I cleaned, I bought food, I made dinner. I was cooking when the phone rang. I remember shouting something, it may have been fuck or maybe jesus idunno. But I stormed out, I ran past Jon and I leapt down the stairs and I nearly took the railing off. I walked down the street and I leapt up and punched a speed limit sign and it bent over, then I jumped up and swung on a pine tree branch. I walked into the Vale and I sat down next to Chorting. There was blood dripping from my fists and I opened them to see pine needles sticking out of my palms. I pulled them out and he just kind of calmly put down his coffee and asked, "Are you okay?". I smeared "no" in my palm. We didn't say much after that.

So I was not surprised. And I'd long since given up having any kind of emotional response to this sort of thing when I heard the news tonight. So while I sit here feeling absolutely nothing I wonder if that's okay. I wonder if I should have some sort of emotional response. But it's just kind of hard. I mean she had this habit of trying to kill herself within a week of us deciding that we were going out. That's just the way it was. And I blame my unrelenting optimism for allowing me to get involved with someone like that, always hoping for the best. And I don't know how many times she tried it when I wasn't around, it just seems to me like it was always the week after we decided that we were exclusive, I never heard about any other times if there were any. So I'm trying to remember all the good times, that's what I'm supposed to be doing, right? I'm supposed to be thinking of all the times when we had fun, when we did anything at all which would explain ignoring visiting hours and hacking into hospital computers in the middle of the night or why I would write bloody messages about not being okay. But I don't really have any, I remember showing up there one day with a Psychology text book because she had an evaluation the following day and we thought it would be funny if she memorized the proper responses to all the Rorschach cards. And I remember her shoving me into the closet one day because her parents came home and there was a rule about having boys in her bedroom, we weren't even seeing each other at that point. I remember trying not to laugh while I was in there at the silliness of it. I remember having to sneak out while she distracted her parents in the kitchen. But I don't remember anything important, I don't remember any conversations we had. I don't remember any movies we watched together. I don't remember kissing her. I don't remember anything at all except for what I just wrote down. It's as though Gretchen Garrison was made up of other people's memories. Other people went to school with her. Other people remember what she was like. Other people remember working with her in the video room and all the times she did this thing or that thing and wasn't that funny or fucked up or whatever it was that they decided it was which she did that I had no part in. And I can't help but thinking that somewhere over the years, at some point when I wasn't watching her smear moisturizer into her scars or spit out charcoal, it was at some point in the between times that we were friends, and that we became close, and it must have been somewhere in there that I decided I liked her enough to keep saying yes in spite of the obvious dangers inherent in being her boyfriend, and it was somewhere in there that she was wonderful enough that some part of my mind decided to cut out every single memory which would ever bring me pain when I received the phone call I got tonight.
And I just have to think that that's probably the worst thing I have ever done to a person and she couldn't possibly have deserved this. Surely cutting her out like this is indicative of her deserving more than to be forgotten almost completely. But I guess I'll have to rely on everyone else, as usual, to tell me what I'm missing. Because I do miss her. And that's kind of strange, I haven't seen her in years, but I read her Live Journal a few weeks ago, and it was really good to read her. And I'm really sad that that's all there is ever going to be. I'm sure that some day in the future it'll all come rushing back to me, I'll probably be sitting somewhere, and maybe it'll be the right place to be sitting whatever that is and maybe it won't, but wherever it is I'll damn well remember it when I have a fucking breakdown and anyone present has to pull my mind back together for me.

Goodbye Gretchen.
okay...
now it hurts...

From Tom

2006-11-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

I had a strange friendship with Gretchen. It was three months of being gay friends right before she went to Prague. I met her outside a club on Long Island called Posh. At the time, I was recruiting contestants for a dating show ElimiDate.

I think we bonded quick because the next day when I called her asking her to appear on the show, I realized that neither of us belonged at that stereotypical Long Island club. We bonded over Macintosh computers, her ex-husband's TiVo and a few other nerdy things.

Not long after, she wound up going out with me while I recruited. There was something about her. She was smart and beautiful yet having a nerdy soul. She brought the best out of me. She reminded me of some of my best friends.

I have a gift of making a conversation last about a minute too long. She had a way of helping me end on a high note . . . before I put my foot in my mouth.

The most fun I had with her was at a celebrity fundraiser for a charity that buys Christmas toys for poor kids two years ago. In fact, I'm not sure if it was two years ago tonight exactly . . . but this year's event was tonight that's one of the reasons why I'm thinking of her.

The celebrity bartenders included Richard Belzer from Law and Order SVU, Diane Lane the DA From Law and Order SVU and Ted McGinley who has been on TV since the 70s (he was on the Love Boat, Hope and Faith, and was Marcy Darcy's husband on Married with Children).

Gretchen made a point of having each of those and a few other celebrities talking to us. While I was catching up with friends she would be talking to a new actor or actress. She wouldn't let Richard Belzer leave unless he did a
shot with us. She had Ted McGinley sharing stories about different comics he's met over the years.

It was her energy I missed. When she was happy it was infectious. I didn't know her long enough to get to know her sad and serious side. It makes me sad to know that her highs had equally powerful lows.

The biggest impact Gretchen had on my life was nudging me to follow up on making a short film idea I had. By the time I had it done, I had fallen out of touch with her and it was before the YouTube revolution.

What's funny is . . . also today, I signed a development deal with a production company based on my IHateWeddings.com web-site and this video I made. In the video, I took my cousin's wedding video and had comedians make fun of it.

Gretchen's advice, which she repeated several times, was essentially to grow some balls and just do it.

She's been away far longer than I knew her. Were it not for the internet, I may not know she was gone forever. Yet for the short time I knew her she had an impact on my life. I wish I was able to share this little piece of success with her. She was my friend and my muse.

I hope that the timing of all of these coincidences means she knows how grateful I am to have known her.

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height="350">

Still Remembering

2006-11-08T21:51:00.000-08:00

I watched last weeks' Grey's Anatomy tonight on Landon's TiVo. A character named Gretchen was admitted to the hospital's psychiactric ward. I don't think that there will ever be a time when coincidences like this don't hit home.

Gretchen, if you were still here, you would be mocking all of us for going to the high school reunion later this month. I can hear your sarcastic commentary on the whole event. I wish you were here to go with us. I wish that I could call you instead of just imagining your reaction.

Gretchen's Page

2006-10-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

Gretchen's Page
It's been 2 moths
Not much changed so far
It actually gets worse

comments

2006-10-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

Just a note about comments to the blog: apparently, we've generated enough hits to trigger comment-spam. I've turned on the comment-moderator feature. If you have any trouble commenting, let me know. Thanks.

Gretchen's Silly Side

2006-10-06T00:57:00.000-07:00

Aimee's post made me want to find some more pictures of Gretchen. I have so many but I always get kind of upset when I look through them, so I'd kind of been avoiding it. But, eh, what the hell. So, here are some of the pictures which, I think, highlight what Aimee said about Gretchen.

This is Gretchen and Langon at the "Royal Ball" that Aimee mentioned.

This is Gretchen, Megan, and Tommy dancing at some party -- not sure which. Perhaps the 'Randomness is an Art' Party

This is Sandy, Gretchen, and Megan dancing at a New Years Eve party at my house -- I think it was 1994 (bringing in 1995).

This is Gretchen dancing at the same party.

This is Gretchen sitting on a bear statue at the Philadelphia Zoo on the afternoon after my senior prom (1995).

And this is Gretchen and Shawn Proctor 'fighting' at a party at my house. I could do a whole series of Gretchen playfighting.

-Christine

From the Czarina of Belarus

2006-10-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Gretchen,
I feel like it's taken so long to write this, and that I still don't have it clear what I want to say. So I'm posting this letter to you to let you know that I miss you. It seems silly to say because we hadn't really been in close contact since high school. And it's hard to believe that's been ten years ...

But I miss knowing that you're out there. And I miss the possibility that we could be close again some day.

Gretchen made almost everything more fun -- gym class, working at Genuardi's, singing along ridiculously loud to Alanis Morisette in my car. (At left, that's Gretchen with me in the middle w/ crazy blond hair and Andrea at my high school graduation party. And there's Gretchen w/ Jamie.)

Part of the reason she made things more fun was that she seemed to have a generally positive outlook. She was quick to laugh and make a joke. She wasn't afraid to do things ... and she took you out of your comfort zone to go with her -- whether is was holding a nightly poll as we were checking out customers at the grocery store or ballroom dancing through Superfresh (why did we spend so much time in grocery stores?).

Gretchen always made people feel special. I was hoping to get this picture by now, but I still remember when she convinced my 14-year-old, middle-schooler brother to join us "big kids" at our boy-girl sleepover party for my 16th birthday. My brother thought he was it, and he had to do it on his terms -- by bringing down all the stuffed animals from his bed. She thought that was adorable.

Gretchen made people feel like they were important, and she had a radiance. A handful of guys have made a point to mention to me how big a crush they had on her. Of course it had been obvious at the time. People loved her, they just did.

It's been no surprise to me to see all these people posting fun and sweet stories about Gretchen, and it's warmed my heart to read them, to know that she continued to live great experiences. ... And we all wish there could have been more. We miss you, Gretchen.

ps -- at gretchen and christine's 16th and 17th birthday party, they assigned us all titles and we were "announced" as we came in, like royalty. i still remember "one night in bangkok" and that i was the czarina of belarus.

Amy's Photos from the Light the Night Walk, Part II

2006-10-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Amy's photos from the Light the Night Walk

2006-10-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

"Lewis and Clark"

2006-09-24T23:34:00.000-07:00

Until I wrote the below list, I'd totally forgotten about playing "Lewis and Clark."

I think that the game was some kind of reaction to growing up in suburbia, where there was no new ground to discover. We used to go to Valley Forge park and try to get lost. It's pretty impossible. You head into the woodyiest thicket you can find. The overgrowth gets thicker, you head in that direction. You definitely try to head *away* from the sound of cars.

The first time that we played was in Strafford. I think that we had been at Jen Hartman's house with Rachel. It was drizzeling a bit. I think we all decided to walk through the woods on the theory that we'd get less wet. I think we may have spent hours wandering around. I think Jen was bored for most of it.

In the park, it was really hard to get lost. I know that park relatively well now though -- from all of the times that we tried. The best we ever did was out behind Devil's Road by the service station. I think that there are old quarries back there. Rachel had freaked me out about that place with vague insinuations of sinster activites. It was terrifying at night, so Gretch and I went there during the day. We tried to get lost. We got the closest that we ever had to being 'lost' [it required a lot of suspension of disbelief] -- we were behind such thick brush that, although we could see where the road should be, we couldn't actually *get* to it. I think that we had to get on our tums and bellycrawl under things. I remember seeing a place where deer definitely slept and being impressed. That was in June of my senior year.

Things were never the same after I went away to college. I guess that's just normal. Rachel visited me a couple of times, but Gretchen was never allowed. We talked. She was in the hospital a few times. I came home in May and went to the Conestoga Senior Prom becuase Gretchen and Megan begged me to. I remember, at the prom, they played NIN's "Closer" and Dr. Pollack (our principal) was very much unprepared for 500 or so students chanting "I wanna fuck you like an animal." Gretchen was so amused by that.

Honestly, it's very possible that I'm mixing up memories from my senior prom and Gretchen's. A lot of my memories from middle school and high school kind of blend together that way. For the most part, they blend into a terrifyingly bright picture of giggly all-nighters, too many pixie stix, moshpits to "Bohemian Rhapsody" at high school dances, and energy.

Gretchen and I had drifted apart in the last few years, but we always stayed in touch. My mom used to say that Gretchen and I fed off each other -- we could be so much more hyper together than we could ever have mustered apart. I feel like the part of me that's manic, spontaneous, and ready for anything is gone without her. I know it's not true, but it won't be quite the same without her.

-Christine

things which make me think of Gretchen

2006-09-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

-"It's Raining Men!"
-the chickendance song
-peanut butter and pickle sandwiches
-the idea of doing cartwheels in high heels
-TV production
-moseying
-pop philosophy
-Trivial Pursuit
-"The Sound of Music"
-Skid Row
-"Grease"
-tall blonde girls (seen from behind)
-anyone calling me "Chrissy," possibly for the rest of my life
-spending hours and hours walking around Chesterbrook
-hangin' out at Genuardis
-'scientific' experiments on starburst candies (hint: they don't smoosh when run over by a car)
-playing "Lewis and Clark" and getting totally lost in the woods
-sneaking out to go to Burger King
-sleepovers, so many sleepovers
-planning parties
-Super Sick Totally Disgusting Sundaes (any sundae with more than 7 toppings)
-the little blue Oldsmobile
-alpha
-gold star confetti
-"Rock the Vote"
-bad teenage poetry
-the King of Prussia Mall ca. 1992
-sour patch kids
-super bounce balls
-talking about boys
-terrorizing people with a video camera
-choral probation
-"Grease"
-trips to Long Island (with my parents)
-bad romance novels
-bad early 90s hair bands
-YMCA
-ee cummings
-"Total Eclipse of the Heart"
-talking shit about Mr. Smedley
-thinking up "Skip"'s nickname
-cutting 8th period TV class to go the McDonalds
-cafeteria runs
-driving down the scary road of demons in Valley Forge National Park (they've widened it now, it's no where near as scary)
-Dennys in the middle of the night
-learning how to wear makeup
-fancy underwear
-big sunglasses
-lost potential
-regret

I'll never get to talk to her again; I miss her.
-Christine

A Sleepover

2006-09-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

Gretchen didn't come back to Philadelphia much after she moved to Long Island. I can only remember two or three trips. The one where she and Langdon and I went to L'Etage (earlier photos), and this one where she and Christine wound up at my house. Langdon was also supposed to wind up at my house, but Langdon had a date. As penalty for having a date, Langdon received some very loud and moderately incoherent voicemails around three o'clock in the morning, some of which were just the three of us screaming the lyrics to "It's Raining Men" at top volume. (Fortunately, my old apartment was fairly secluded, and I could make all the noise I wanted without bothering anyone.) I believe Dave probably also received a voicemail or two. I went to bed in my room, Christine in the front guest room and Gretchen in the little guestroom at the back of the third floor, but this proved to be no fun at all, and we all wound up in Christine's bed in time to leave voicemails for people before passing out. I remember waking up and diving for our cell phones to check the outgoing call history to find out who needed to be called with an explanation. This was May of 2003.

Gretchen was very proud of herself for driving all the way down from New York in her new Audi. It was one of her longest drives on her own. Did we go to South Street? I know that we went to the King of Prussia mall the next day, because I remember going to Nordstrom Rack and the sportsbar in the same part of the mall. We refused to take our sunglasses off in the sportsbar, and we insisted on ordering orange juice and triple sec, which is what we occasionally used to drink in high school, on the extremely rare occasions we did drink. At Nordstrom Rack, we were so beside ourselves having laughed for over twenty-four hours straight, that Gretchen wound up waving around the largest underwear she could find, and it sent us into convulsions. I'm sure we were the most obnoxious customers that day.

More photos

2006-09-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten this one. It's a nice picture. One of my trips to visit Gretchen in Long Island, early 2001 I believe.

Somewhere in Long Island? Somewhere with a dog? I'm drawing a blank.

On a trip to Long Island. Gretchen looks nice here. Dave... looks like he must have just gotten up?

Seeing the softer side of Sears at the KoP mall, sometime in high school. 10th grade, maybe? This was one of the first times she and I hung out outside of school.

Gretch

2006-09-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

The family memorial was very small. Granny, who lives in Sheffield, was there. Tedd came in from Oregon, Aunt Judy from New Orleans, and Aunt Sarah and her son Patrick were there and they live in Florence, Alabama. My mom and dad and John and I drove up from Florida. It was a long weekend and after a month we finally had the chance to all get together and remember Gretchen. She was laid to rest next to my mother. We had a brief service at the church in Sheffield and then we drove out to the cemetary. She was laid to rest next to our mother, as Gretchen wanted it. We each laid a red rose on the box her remains were in and we said our goodbyes. On Thursday, when I was driving to Clewiston, Florida for my Relay For Life Rally it finally hit me we were finally going to bury Gretchen. With her being so far away in Prague, we knew she was gone but it never really hit home until this weekend. We finally had something visible to show us that Gretchen was gone and seeing the tombstone with her name on it next to my moms was very eerie. At the service, my dad had a story that I never remember hearing. Gretch was in 5th grade and she had to write a paper about hydrogen. My dad saw it and she only had a sentence or two. So my dad gave her all sorts of books and said here you go, now you have a lot of information on the paper. She wrote the paper, and it was about a page and half. Her teacher was going to fail her, because she thought there was no way a 5th grader could write this paper. Well when she sat down and talked to Gretchen, Gretchen explained what it all meant. Gretchen knew more than the teacher and the teacher was amazed. Gretchen was always very intelligent and had such potential. She was very well read and I am not a big reader like my dad and Gretch.
I remember when we were growing up, Gretch and I would pick on Tedd. In our house in Louisiana, our bedrooms had a bathroom between them. So if we locked both of our bedroom doors we had our corner of the house to ourselves and we didn't have to leave to go to the bathroom because we had one right there. Gretchen loved the movie Annie and would sing the songs out on the porch in front of the house. One time when we were in Alabama, I took a picture of Gretchen and she was ready to strangle me and she gave you one of those looks of hers. She had the green face mask on and I thought it was hysterical so I had to take a picture of it. My grandparents in Sheffield, Alabama used to live on the top of a huge cliff. On the 4th of July, there would be a barge on the river below and they would shoot the fireworks off from there. Gretchen, Tedd and I had a lemonade and coke stand and we thought it was the greatest thing. Everyone would sit on our grandparents' lawn to see the fireworks and we would have our little stand. Granny said one summer we each made about $60 and we were running through the house saying we were rich.
Gretchen, Tedd and I would spend hours at Aunt Sarah's house in her pool. Gretchen loved floating around on the raft in the pool and Tedd and I loved flipping it over and dumping her in the pool or jumping right by where she was floating to splash her......oohhh she couldn't stand when we did that.
Gretchen always loved her time with her high school buds, her Hooters gang and all of the adventures you guys would go on. It's been great seeing all of the picturs you guys have posted....the parties, the proms, the trips...etc. Dave thanks for all of the pictures you sent my dad. I was sick at the wedding and just wanted to crawl back in bed so my fever would go away and forgot my camera so it was good seeing all of the wedding pictures again. She was so happy and excited that day. It was good to see that she had finally found happiness and was ready to settle down. She always spoke very highly of your family and she loved being an aunt.
I'll always remember the story of you two coming to Sheffield, Alabama for my granddaddy's 80th birthday and the story Gretchen probably told about 1000 times that weekend about the bottle of scotch and the adventure through the airport you guys had with it.

2006-09-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

I have been very reserved in posting, I admit. Due in large part for not knowing what to say and how to convey who this (Gretchen) Mad Hatter, Chameleon, Sullen, Comic Beauty and Cohort truly was. Then I realized some of the finer details that made up this Starry Night Van Gogh soul are missing.

She loved Starry Night. We spent a good 6 hours at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. A good portion of which she spent spell bound in front of Starry Night. Post cards, posters, coffee mugs, screen savers, refrigerator magnets. Starry Night.

Pickles, oh much ado on small preserved cucumbers. Of Course her Grand Mothers where her favorite. If memory serves correctly, the butter variety made of kerkins. She would mash them into everything; tuna fish, mash potatoes, you name it.

So Olives where right out. No Olives, or more to the point "no fucking olvies in my salad please." Yea she fit in perfectly in New York.

Thin Mints. Okay every one has a favorite brand of cookie. So Gretchen's where only on sale once a year. Of course this meant having to purchase them a case at a time from one or more co-workers kids.

So Thin Mints leads to September 11, 2001. Everyone knows where he or she were, what he or she did, who they called first. What did Gretchen and I do after the who, what, where & when? We drove around to all the firehouses in Hempstead Township and gave the firemen Thin Mints and Milk. To the tune 60+ plus boxes. When we got home she said they where the best Cookies she ever had.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet. “From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2), and so long as it's not Wyle. Yea she had a serious hat for that middle name of hers. Granted I am not 100% on the spelling, but that is because she threatened me with castration should I ever use it, in any way, with the soul exception of my favorite cartoon. Which she would not watch due to the name, so all I can say is, Long Live Wyle E. Coyote "Super Genius".

The Barbie Car, well it fit. Gretchen’s first car was a 1992, baby blue, Jeep Wrangler. On a lift Kit, with cow hide steer wheel cover, and Hommies toys super glued to the dash. She and yes, she rolled that end over end 4 times in one shot. But she was a safe driver, so long as there was no fast food in the car.

I hope this open's the shades on Gretchen a bit more. And on the sly, between you and me (and the rest of the Internet), these are just a few of the things she would skin me alive for sharing with you, but are all true.

-Dave Kaminsky

Gretchen's Family Memorial

2006-09-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

Dear Misha, Dave, Christine, Megan, Langdon, Julie, friends of Gretchen's and all,

This morning, September 23, 2006 her family held a Memorial Service for Gretchen. She was laid to rest next to her mother in Sheffield, Alabama. We spent last night and today remembering all the good things about her, the fun times we shared and viewing photos of her life.
It's clear from the messages on this blog that she had many friends with whom she shared the happiest times of her life.
We appreciate the love each of you gave to Gretchen to enrich her life. Thanks so much for the care and the concern you have shown us.
We hope and pray that she is at peace. She will always live in our hearts.

Ted, Bonda, Tedd and Shannon

A Haiku

2006-09-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

One of Gretchen's friends from high school emailed this to me. They prefer to remain anonymous.

Warm laughter on top,
Icy death-wish underneath:
A Gretchen sundae.

Gretchen, thanks for being there when I needed you. You were a good friend.

A Dinner to Remember Gretchen in PA

2006-09-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

Gretchen's been gone for a month. Thanks everybody for your emails and support, and for contributing to the blog. It's been nice hearing from all of the people who cared about her.

Christine and I have been talking about it a lot, and we still feel that we would like to get together to remember her, and to get closure. We're still looking at the weekend before Christmas. It seems like a terribly busy weekend, but also a time when a lot of us will be here around Berwyn visiting family, so probably the best chance for as many of us to get together as possible. I initially though Saturday, but I know several people are travelling out of this area on Saturday, so how about Friday, December 22nd, around 7:00PM.

Please leave a comment on the blog if you plan to attend. It's not an RSVP, but I need to know approximately how many people we'll have so that I can find a place that can accomodate us. I'm looking at the Main Street Cafe in Berwyn, which is owned by one of our former classmates.

At the dinner, we will collect donations to Light the Night, a leukemia charity for which Gretchen did a lot of work in New York, to donate in her name. I'm not sure about a plan for the rest of the evening. I've never planned something like this before. I'm open to your suggestions. I think that it would be nice if those of us who wanted to had an opportunity to say something or read something about Gretchen. I think Total Eclipse of the Heart should be involved somehow.

Party Group Shot

2006-09-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

Judging by the people present, this is certainly my 10th grade (1993?). Possibly the end of it. It's one of my favorite pictures that I have from high school -- I just like the composition -- the attacking pillow fight in the back, Lisa and Dan looking all couply, Sandy up front, Andrea sticking out her feet, me in the middle. I love this picture. It kind of epitomizes all of our high school parties for me.

NY Postcard

2006-09-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

*snerk* Well, Megan posted hers, here's mine. I had forgotten that we did this the day before my 18th birthday. That was a tough summer and, at the time, I kind of felt like this was a major turning point back to "normalcy."

After high school photos

2006-09-21T22:40:00.000-07:00

Dunkin Donuts in Bryn Mawr was an alternative to Denny's once in a while.
These are from February, 2000.

This one is my favorite.

High school photos

2006-09-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

Gretchen, Rick and me. Rick is wearing a rubber chicken. I'm not sure why.
Gretchen, Megan, and Nicole, at a school dance, 10th grade. I made my own dress. We used to wear lots of necklaces.
Another version of the photo of Gretchen and me dressed as prep school girls.
Gretchen, Eric, me, junior prom, 1994-ish?
On the bus after junior prom 1994ish
Gretchen and me on the bus after junior prom. We weren't juniors. It never really mattered.
The play that nearly got us kicked out of school. I think that the date is wrong. I think that it was 1995.

(I got my scanner working.)

New York, August 10-11, 1995

2006-09-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Christine's Mom,

If you are reading this, I promise, this is the one and only time we did anything like this.

Gretchen, Christine, Sandy and I would never borrow Sandy's mom's car and drive to New York City in the middle of the night. We would never drive on the track at Valley Forge Intermediate School. We wouldn't take a glow worm to light our way. We wouldn't get there and realize that we had absolutely nothing to do, and turn around and come home in time for work the next morning. We were good kids.

Really.

Love,
Megan

2006-09-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly a month now.

I was doing better until I had that realization.

-Christine

Misha's Song for Gretchen

2006-09-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

In going through old emails, I found one from Gretchen where she sent me the song Misha wrote for her.

Misha's Song for Gretchen, Where A Light Comes From

Here are the lyrics:

Where a Light Comes From

There's Angel speaking fierily about hell
There's a land of white laundry and underwear
There are heavy clouds upon Amsterdam
There are words unspoken in Atlantic air

There's a kingdom on rise / There's a kingdom on rise
What I can see is all mine / What I can see is all mine

And somehow the daylight is brighter now
And somehow the sunshine is all around
And somehow the sunshine comes from our scars

The boy out of presence is taken back
A stone has been thrown in his well
Morning froze the sheets on the bed
When the fall spreads its arms in his tiny flat

There's a kingdom on rise / There's a kingdom on rise
What I can see is all mine / What I can see is all mine

And somehow the daylight is brighter now
And somehow the sunshine is all around
And somehow the sunshine comes from our scars

I can believe in lies / I can believe in lies
What I can see is all mine / What I can see is all mine

And somehow the daylight is brighter now
And somehow the sunshine is all around
And somehow the sunshine comes from our scars

I can believe in lies / I can believe in lies
What I can see is all mine / What I can see is all mine

And somehow the daylight is brighter now
And somehow the sunshine is all around
And somehow the sunshine comes from our scars
And somehow the sunshine comes from our scars
And somehow the sunshine comes from our scars

And somehow are no heaven and no hell
While the angel is sleeping in your bed

Misha records under the name Niceland, http://niceland.wz.cz/.

Another one of Gretchen's charities?

2006-09-14T21:36:00.000-07:00

I know Gretchen was involved with Light the Night. It appears that she was also affiliated with this campaign to support the children affected by Hurricaine Katrina:

http://speakup.oxygen.com/campaigns/neworleans/browse/6b960258adf12c757021b8f158bbfb09

If you click on the link to "Unregistered Friends", you'll find her name. I remember that the news of the hurricaine really affected Gretchen. If you read the posts on her livejournal from that time, she talks about it.

Sinking In

2006-09-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

Things seem to be sinking in, at least for Christine and me. The initial news was such a shock, and I had gotten used to Gretchen's absences, so it's weird to reconcile the fact that she's really gone this time. I won't get an email from her. She won't show up in a comment on my personal journal. She won't be making any trips back to visit. I'll never get an invitation to her wedding to Misha.

Christine and I have both been posting our crazy memories, which probably make no sense to anyone outside of a select few people. Some of the jokes were exclusive, between Christine and Gretchen, or between Gretchen and me, and they won't make sense to anyone at all. We've been listening to crazy amounts of Bonnie Tyler.

I've gotten some calls and emails over the past couple of weeks from all over the world and from right here in Philadelphia, so I know that people are visiting the page. I'm glad. I hope that it's helping you. And, it's for everyone, not just a few of us. If you're reading, and you want to comment or post, please do. It's a huge comfort to us when you share your memories and thoughts. It doesn't matter if we know you, or if you weren't friends of ours in high school. If you want to post, we would love to hear from you. Just email me (megan_m_young@hotmail.com) and I'll send you an invitation to join the blog.

Seriously, your posts really help me. Shannon's expressions of the future and regrets over things Gretchen will never see, Misha's sweet story of how they met, Dave's post which so perfectly defined spending time with Gretchen, Eve's beautiful poem that Gretchen would have loved, Gretchen's trip to the zoo with Julie, Amy's tribute, Rachel's pictures from high school, Meg's insight into her mindset and the fact that she was at peace with her decision... just knowing that you're out there and you knew her and you loved her and you're thinking about her. It really helps. Thanks, everybody.

Just some thoughts

2006-09-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

I am so glad Megan started this site and that people have been posting. I check it every day and I have enjoyed reading all of your memories of Gretchen.

I had debated on whether or not to post my thoughts on this but after seeing many questions from you all about why Gretchen could take her own life, I thought it might be helpful to put my two cents in. No one can fully understand the concept of someone taking their own life. In my line of work (social work and therapy) I have unfortunately dealt with a number of people who have committed suicide. What I have learned form my studies, my patients, and sadly now, my friends, is that there is NOTHING any of us could have done. Once someone makes the decision to end their life, there is no talking them out of it. Once they have a plan and the means to carry out the plan, there is rarely a friend, a therapist, a partner, a family member, or anyone that can prevent the inevitable.

The other thing that happens is that once they have made that decision in their mind, they often appear incredibly happy to those around them. They are content and at peace with their decision and often feel freed even before they complete the act. I have heard a few people mention that Gretchen seemed so happy in her final weeks of life and even tried to patch up torn relationships. She may have been at peace with her decision to rest her soul. And because our loved one appears so content, why would anyone suspect what they are about to do? I will say it again that there is nothing anyone could have done to prevent this tragedy. The only thing we can do is celebrate her life and help others BEFORE they get to the point of making the terrible decision that they think will set them free of their demons.

Knowing these things is one of the ways that I have learned to deal with this kind of loss. Remembering fun times and fond memories and sharing them with others is another way to cope.

Thanks to everyone for posting and please keep it up.

Meghan

Birthdays

2006-09-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

It's weird, but I can't remember ever getting Gretchen a birthday present. And I can't remember if she ever got anything for me either. We always had joint-parties, so I find it inconceivable that we didn't exchange presents.

Hmm. Megan and I were talking about wills and about stuff from Gretchen tonight and that's what made me think about it. Back at the parental homestead, I know that I have a set of marbles that Gretchen got me when I went into the hospital (because I'd lost mine, ha). I remember stickers. For our "Royal Ball" birthday party, we each got magic wands -- I still have mine.

She was the one who named my teddybear "jinglebutt."

I remember mix tapes. I remember writing each other stories. I remember notes that filled entire notebooks. I remember bad poetry about boys in bands and tales that I used to write her in spanish about a parrot and a monkey named (creatively) MI PAPAGAYO y MI MONO (always in all-caps). I remember secret codes (well, their existence) used to write out the lyrics to Guns 'n' Roses songs.

I don't remember birthday presents. It's weird.

Sleepovers

2006-09-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Gretchen slept over at my house A LOT (every weekend if she wasn't grounded, I think). And, when it was just the two of us, sleepovers consisted of staying up all night to:
1. Watch horror movies
2. Watch old movies and play games
3. Plan an upcoming party

Watching horror movies involved a very carefully crafted plan. There were certain requirements. We called them the "Four Cs": Chocolate, Caffeine, Chinese Food, and Cheesy Horror Movies. That was the Platonic ideal of a night watching horror movies. Fortunately, all of those things were available up at Genuardi's. It could take us more than an hour to choose the perfect horror movies. We were looking for certain qualities in the perfect horror movie -- we wanted it to be cheesy and dumb, we wanted there to be some jumping out and scary, and we wanted there to be a cute guy. We never quite managed to find it. But one of our absolute favorites that we did find (no cute guy) was called "...And the Night Brings Charlie." It was, swear to God, about a disfigured tree surgeon in a small town who is suspected of a series of murders. I just found it on the IMDB and the description there just doesn't do it justice. Our other favorite was called "Truth or Dare" but not the Madonna movie -- this was about a guy who goes psychotic and starts playing incredibly violent "truth or dare" with himself (he doesn't realize that it's himself). Our favorite part was during a scene when he's sitting at a campsite playing truth or dare and he dares himself to, well, basically blow his head off. He says "I dare you to put this in your mouth [a grenade] and blow your head off." And he does it. But somehow doesn't die. The movie had obvious places where you could see that they'd stopped tape and applied blood. And when we watched the credits, we could see that half of the cast was related to the casting director [consulting IMDB, I see that it's called "Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness].

Anyhow.
Back to sleepovers.
Old movies were always the same. We watched "Clue," "Grease," "The Sound of Music," and "Saturday Night Fever." Often in that order. It was generally about 3am when "The Sound of Music" went in and that's never a good idea (it's a long movie). Because "Saturday Night Fever" was always last, we almost never saw the end (which is good -- the end is depressing). We sang along to all of the songs in "Grease" and "The Sound of Music." For "The Sound of Music," we actually had callback responses like people do for "Rocky Horror." They were basically inside jokes that we made so many times that we just said them everytime we saw the movie. Many of them involved the oldest son, Friederich, his lederhosen, and how enchanting he felt that he was. Though, I have to admit, it was Megan who shared the obsession with Gayorg von Trapp. When Gretchen was a freshmen in high school, she started dating the Austrian exchange student and she made him watch "The Sound of Music."

While we watched movies, we usually played "Trivial Pursuit." Okay, this is going to sound incredibly dorky, but Gretchen and I used to have all-night Trivial Pursuit marathons. I'm not sure how it started. But we had actual inside jokes about the questions (becasue we'd seen so many of them so many times). Our version of the game involved liberal hinting -- in fact, coming up with hints were the fun parts. Sometimes we also played Scrabble. But we played by our own rules. We played that, if you could make up a convincing sounding meaning for a word, you got to keep it. We once ended up making up the story of a small island in the Pacific called something like OOUUIIBOOO because one of us had a ton of vowels. I actually have all of the words from that written down somewhere. *goes to look*

Ah!
DEIAOUO: lost Haiwian (sic) island that sank into the sea
DEIAOUOER: inhabitant
MEZ: chillibean, believed to be candy
TOX: island form of chicken pox, break out in tic tacs
TALEACERA: expression that means "Gee Bob, did you see Joe fly out of the volcano last night??"
ORRGA: what island chief said when he saw Joe fly out of the volcano
BEDHUE: island fertility spirit -- sat atop bed and blessed you with children if it liked you
CADD: Chiefs Against Drinking and Driving
THOYB: alcoholic drink of choice on island
WOPO: sound Joe made when he hit the ground
SWELDNOVW: chief's name, literally "the counselor of impotent men"
WAAA: sound Joe made while flying through the air
LEGNEF: Joe's widow (Sue)
STOA: island spelling of Joe
DIGA: island music Joe and the island slut were dancing to
SKEIPETS: name of the island slut (Bambi)
SUMP: sound spear (that Sue threw at Bambi) made when it hit Bambi's head
LOQORRGA: name sue called Bambi before killing her (slut)
TRILYNER: Joe and Sue's daughter, became the village slut after Bambi's death (Candee)
AJAN: price for one hour with Candee (34 cents)
NIIIN: sound Sue made when screaming at Candee after learning that she was the village whore
VICDOER: socially acceptable term for whore on the island -- "friendly for money"

Alright -- really no one but Gretchen and I ever needed to know all of that, but it amuses me deeply. I don't know why I felt the need to write it all down in my journal.

Finally, if there was a party coming up, we would plan that. Gretchen and I always threw parties together and always at my house. There was often a theme. There were generally a list of posted rules. I remember one party, the theme was "Randomness is an Art" and we stayed up all night making a "Randomness Packet" that we made everyone read when they got to the party. I wish that I had one of those still. It involved recipies, movie quotes, poetry, excerpts from fiction (definitely some from a romance novel), fun facts (I think that one of them was "Calvin Coolidge liked to wear baggy underwear"). To decorate, we pulled out all of mom's holiday decorations -- we had christmas lights, hanging easter eggs, pumpkin lights, random banners that said things like "Happy Anniversary Tom and Fiona."

I'm not sure if it was the same party, but before one of our parties, we were on three way calling with Amy Geiss and, as we were getting off the phone, either Gretchen and I said that we were waving goodbye. Amy thought waving over the phone was very odd and we couldn't get her to do it. So, determined to get Amy to do something 'silly,' we told her that she had to bring a stuffed animal to the party that night. Amy said she wouldn't. So we told her that we were going to make bringing a stuffed animal an absolute requirement for entrance. And we did. We told everyone and everyone had to bring one. I think that I still have random stuffed animals around my mom's house that belonged to people who forgot them.

Usually, at the end of the night of a sleepover, we would go up to Genuardi's when they opened to get more soda and generally make a nuisance out of ourselves. Then we'd come home and collapse. This was pretty much the program for sleepovers with Gretchen and me. When other people were involved, it changed. But, when it was the two of us, this was commonly the agenda. Things changed a bit once we started to get older, but until I was old enough to drive (I think), this is pretty much how it went.

Okay, that's enough for now.

Songs that Remind me of Gretchen

2006-09-12T22:19:00.000-07:00

I just read Christine's post, and then I sat down at my piano with the same old sheet music for Total Eclipse of the Heart that Gretchen always had me play for her when she couldn't sleep. I can barely play the piano anymore. It's been here in my living room for almost a year, but it frustrates me because I can't play remotely as well as I could in high school. I guess that's what happens when you don't play for a decade. I started picking out the notes, lots of missed flats, but then, I came to the chorus, and I stopped looking at the music and it all just came back to me. I must have played it for her one hundred times. I hope Gretchen got to see the movie Bandits. The music of Bonnie Tyler features prominently, and I remember watching it and thinking that I had to call her to tell her to watch it. I'm not sure if I ever did.

So, Gretchen, if you're out there haunting something, go check out Bandits. You'll love Cate Blanchett's character. Really.

Some other Gretchen favorites:

Juice Newton's Angel of the Morning: this is the song to which we were "chair dancing" in the tv stuido

Never Tear Us Apart by INXS: I remember listening to it on repeat during sleepovers

Oh What a Night by Franki Valli: the consummate school dance song, my fondest memory of it is showing up late to some disco dance with Gretchen after a lightning run to the Downingtown Flea Market. In the car on the way back, she decided that we should trade... shoes? entire outfits? that part I don't remember, but I do remember showing up for the dance in some various state of undress due to clothes-trading and convincing the deejay (who thought she was cute) to let us stand on a speaker

Forever Young by Alphaville: Gretchen was one of very few people who realized what this song was actually about, and we loved the irony that it was appropriated as a "romantic" song for school dances

November Rain, Another Brick in the Wall Part II (we started a write-in campaign to make this our prom theme instead of that creepy Live song... Gretchen pointed out that a prom theme shouldn't contain the word "placenta")

I wish I knew what happened to the mix tape she made me.

high school pictures

2006-09-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

I was a wreck earlier tonight. I dunno why -- Gretchen's absence just keeps hitting me out of nowhere. I was doing the dishes and I kind of just crumpled up into a little messy, sobby ball. I keep telling myself that crying isn't going to make her come back. It doesn't help. I have this playlist that I put together of all songs that Gretchen liked or that remind me of high school. I lose it everytime "Total Eclipse of the Heart" comes on.

Anyhow -- this is this evenings attempt at solace through the scanning of old photos.

This is (from left to right) Julie Saccente, Sandy Macias, Becky Degler, Gretchen, Me, Gaetan Spurgin, and (in the back) Shawn Proctor. Sandy brought her rat with her too but you can't see him in the picture (he was in a carrier). It must have been an inservice day or something (which would explain why Rachel isn't there). This picture is in the cul-de-sac outside of Gretchen's house. We basically started walking through Chesterbrook and picking up friends on the way to the park.

We went over to Valley Forge Park to this place that Rachel had found once while horseback riding (I recall her not being so thrilled that large groups of us were going there). Basically, it was this old building that you were, uh, perhaps not supposed to go so close to. But we always went and picniced on the roof. You could see people going by on the path below, but there were so many branches that people couldn't really see you. It was amusing. It was really hard to get up there though -- the 'easy' way involved climbing up this steep wall with lots of slippery dirt and sliding rocks. But we always made it. There was also a creek nearby and a small gorge that we liked to play in. The gorge had a giant tree that had fallen down at one point and you could climb halfway up the side of the gorge on the tree. I also remember and old rusted out car, but I'm not sure if I'm making that up in my head.

Anyhow -- here is us just before the picnic. I think, perhaps, the park authorities would have rather that we didn't go up there.

Here's a nice picture of Gretchen and Megan dressed up as preppy schoolgirls. I have no idea why. Gretchen always did try to wear the shortest skirt.

I had totally forgotten about this until I found this photo. Gretchen and I were both in probability and statistics and the night before the midterm (I think) we went over to Langdon's house to study [I think that was the first time that I really spent time with Langdon]. We all studied, I remember there being lizard stickers (Gretchen put one on the steering wheel of my car, which stayed there until, well, until the car was no more). In our studying silliness, we became obsessed with "Mr. Fishie" (alpha) and, after the test, we went over to the classroom for our Prob-Stat teacher (totally don't remember her name) and Gretchen wrote this on the board:

Here's Gretchen with Langdon in the doorway to the classroom right afterwards:

Because Tommy Kelleher emailed me this week, I have two photos of him and Gretchen to share. This first one is just after the junior prom. For reasons I don't understand, Megan, me, Gretchen, and Tommy felt the need to all pile on top of each other in the bus seat on the way to the afterparty on the boat. I think that the person in the stripey shirt is Gaetan. No idea who's sleeping in the seat in front of us.

And this is me, Jeff Taylor, Gretchen, and Tommy before my senior prom (they were all juniors). This is one of the few pictures from before the prom where Jeff doesn't have a small stuffed cat in his vest. We're standing on the back deck of my parents' house.

And, just to be surreal, here is Gretchen in a large ceramic frog:

-Christine

The Yearbook Inscriptions (1994 and 1995... by 1996, i was over high school and didn't have anyone sign my yearbook)

2006-09-11T17:25:00.000-07:00

2004:

"Megan, darling- This year has been WONDERFUL! Mr. Shmuck! Minister Smurf/the Red M&M/HIM!/Marty Smurf/Brother Red/Preppy was an unforgettable experience! Pop Rocks! Puff the Magic Dragon! A TOTAL Eclipse of the Heart! (guess what- it makes me cry) RUSH (the saddest movie of all time) Harold & Maude (the coolest movie of all time) Suicide Club (the strangest movie of all time) etc. Mr. Rogers! Hitler- we have four stories. The STORYTELLING FESTIVAL! Root Cellars. Lorena Bobbit. The Shakespeare Festival. TV Studio visits. Dandilion and Clover chains, PROM! Hair Repair! GUYS ARE STUPID! My men, your men. Tom's Party and RICKY! (He had a blast) Batman (the puppet guy) Grease- what color is that car, Megan? All hail Patrick! Chocolate covered cherries! "It won't stay up... I think it's broken." "Mr. Shmuck, my pickle ball went under the bleachers, will you get it for me... PLEASE!" No sodas in the Hobson C Wagner Memorial Auditorium! The theatre arts chick! You can't be late to theatre arts! I quit smoking- AGAIN. Skipping onto the boat. Dancing! Spinning! SLEEPING! Christine's silver dress, the Breakfast Club. The Queen and the Soldier. The Pourhouse Cafe. "How exactly do you go about becoming a gym teacher?" Reclining car seats. "Yes Megan, it's your dress." Lighting dandylion [sic] seeds on fire. Lorena was a battered wife, Lorena had a kitchen knife." "Why don't you like this song Matt?" Matt is GEOGEOUS. Thanks for introducing me to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and folk music and The Giving Tree... and the tree was happy... Mr. McFeely... Little Bunny Foo Foo; a dramatic reading on your answering machine. Only the good die young. Tom's Diner. Shopping in Wayne for Tom and his oh-so-fashionable outfit! You're beautiful and you know in your heart that it's true and that I'm being sincere. THANKS FOR A MARVOLOUS YEAR! Heart you always, GRETCHEN"

2005:

"Megan- Wow! We survived another year! Only one more to go. This one has been interesting: Satanic mindgames (die ******* die), PROMS! and the failed attempt at flashlight tag, your men, my men, Marty-free! (yes, I had to mention the infamous minister smurf), us not speaking to each other even though neither of us was mad, oh, I saw VOYAGER! The greatest band on earth! You leaving theatre, You are a communist! (tee hee!), SMEDS Loves SHEEP (yucky), It's been fun! Oh, I forgot about that GREAT FILM, Slacker! It talks about smurfs. It must be cool... I'm trying to think of something inspirational to say but I'm drawing a blank. I think it has something to do with at least one of three factors: 1) it's 90 degrees outside, 2) it's the last day of classes & 3) in five days, we'll be seniors and it's time to practice the blank look. In reflection: I'm glad that we did Group Therapy, an amazing play. I'm sorry you were denied the opportunity to see it put to life. Desipte the pain-in-the-ass administrative obstacles, we did it, even Scene X, in front of Mr. Cowburn! Wow! CHAIR DANCING KICKS ASS! That tape (at least a segment) will be going on air. I think tomorrow. Well, anyway, love you always, be happy, take care of yourself. Smile. Heart, Gretchen. PS: When you see your friends having fun playing with your things, you should be happy, too."

The play she's talking about, Group Therapy was a pretty damn gutsy move for a bunch of students. It's certainly my proudest moment in high school, and I think it impacted Gretchen as well. Basically, we risked expulsion and all sorts of terrible things to perform a play that I had written, and Gretchen starred in. Our school banned it due to homosexual themes, but Gretchen backed me up and urged me to do it anyway because we felt that it was an important statement. We got in a bit of trouble, but it basically got brushed under the carpet (as did most things in high school) when it turned out that there was a lot of community support for it. Gretch was a rebel and a partner in crime. I've missed that since she hasn't been part of my daily life. These yearbook entries remind me just how much. I believe "Pop Rocks" was a euphamism for boys we liked, some of the quotes are from Mr. Rogers, and the Lorena stuff is from a song I wrote and we used to sing at the top of our lungs.

Oh, a bonus, Gretchen's Senior Quote: "Its necessary 2 have wished 4 death in order 2 know how good it is 2 live.- Dumas. Thanx to my friends- I luv u all! Pop rocks! Red M&Ms, TETV, Fam, Grease, Randomness, NYC, Don't you forget about me. "

How could we?

The Wedding in Pictures, Part 2

2006-09-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

The Wedding, in Pictures

2006-09-11T17:08:00.000-07:00

The Night Before the Wedding, in Pictures

2006-09-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

I had to *not* upload some of the more scandalous ones in order to protect Christine, Langdon's and my reputations.

Photos from Gretchen's Trip to Philadelphia

2006-09-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

These are from a weekend that Gretchen visited a few years ago. It was in the spring. We went to L'Etage and then Jim's Steaks for 3AM cheesesteaks, the worlds' best food, and no, I'm not just saying that because I'm from Philly. There's nothing like the late-night post-bar spectacle that is a Philly cheesesteak establishment.

The Prague story

2006-09-11T04:20:00.000-07:00

Hi to everyone,
at first, I wanted to apologise for not contributing here earlier but everything's just a mess now and no matter what, I had to go back to work. Plus packing, moving, unpacking. I have been reading all your stories and looking at the photos and I just didn't what to say. Most of the stuff is really touching. And hurting in some way. But that's just how it is, I guess.

Anyways there was a request for some stories from Prague so here's the first one.

I work in english bookshop, quite a touristy place, especially americans and brits. And it was in the middle of September when I saw Gretchen for the first time. You all can tell how beautiful she was and I used to be a little shy boy and (I know this sounds really weird but she somehow got shy around me as well, she even actually though about giving me a piece of paper with her phone number and running away...) So it actually took us couple days before we even spoke to each other. She managed to catch me right after I finished my shift and since I had no idea that a girl like her would be ever interested in me we spent another two hours just hanging out in my job for no reason. And then she literally dragged me out and convinced me to show her some good bars in Prague.
And we kissed the same night...
We met early afternoon the next day. I called off most of my shifts. We ended up in one beautiful tiny park, full of roses and trees and then were talking for hours and hours. I was too stupid to realise how romantic it was then...but now I know. Awfullly cutely romantic...
The night before she left, she flipped through her guidebook, found one of the most expensive restaurants in Prague and invited me for a dinner. And she enjoyed being a little sugermama so much.
She left, after four days, with early train to Germany and we kept SMSing each other through her whole trip there, and the whole time she was in Amsterdam.
And then came those 2 miserable moths of several emails a day, hours of chatting on ICQ and 1 hour of international phonecalls every night (or morning). We both just couldn‘t understand how could it get that crazy; being with each other for 3 days and she spent about 2.000 $ for a phone bill (as she ran away from, of course). She bought a flight ticket after three weeks...
But first, she shipped boxes with her clothes. And, you can just imagine. Five 35 cubic feet boxes full of clothes, 1 full of shoes...Then I felt really glad that the apartment we found was big enough (not for both of us, just for her and her stuff...but i didn‘t care:-)
She arrived at beginning of December...
Everything was just perfect and full of hopes and expectations...

One More Post

2006-09-11T01:34:00.000-07:00

This is what Gretchen wrote in my yearbook Senior Year. I think that I remember about 99% of these inside jokes. Everything amused us. Almost every year she did a roundup of memories. In one of my middle school yearbooks, she wrote out the chorus to the song "Estranged" by Guns 'N' Roses in a secret code that we'd come up with. Anyhow -- here's Gretchen in 1995:

Chrissy -- Wow. It's all over. You are graduating in a mere week. So much has changed since we met. I was the pure, innocent 8th grader and you were the bad influence...and somehow I became the rebel and you the voice of reason. Mixed in all our adventures through the years there was the constant of the TV STUDIO! One big incestuous family! Baa! No, Don, no! I'm ENCHANTING! And countless other inside jokes that evolved from us being in a very small enclosed area for long periods of time. Your brief stint as GUIDANCE GIRL (that's me now!)! Oh yeah! And of course Ricki Lake and Jenny Jones! And Chrissy, we cannot forget that you are my mommy! But now I won't have to leech off you, since we will be chillin' at Genuardi's! Yippee skippee!
FLASHBACK (since that is this yearbook's theme): Rock the vote! On your knees! Shawnith! Marty "the boy" Molloy! Mischa and my studio flings! Junior prom '94 -- crammed in a bus seat! Choral probation! Tequila! RANDOMNESS! (is an art). "The cafeteria is an extension of the TV Studio." Jen and John -- "what's going on behind that table!?" All night Trivia Pursuit Marathons! JOLT and NODOZ! The chicken dance! The ROYAL BALL! Drive-by flower pickings! 6 hour mall trips -- (drumroll) El joven del Dejaiz! Seve, Blas, and Axl...and Luke! Roberto -- the homsexual hostage living in the Spanish section of China. The monotone. LOVE BUNNY! New Year's! -- Who am I now? The Sound of Music -- Friedrick! Saturday Night Fever! Disco fever! Senior Prom -- Thai Pepper -- How did the parsley get there?? I WANNA FUCK YOU LIKE AN ANIMAL! (Oh, hi Dr. Pollock!) Jeff-for-free and friends...Andy...1-800-Tampax. Medicine Man. Pixie Stix - Trichonichism -- POISON -- "Bonda Joy, Bonda Joy..." and our other poetry. MI PAPAGAYO (or really TU PAPAGAYO) -- Fuzzy navels -- Driving 15 mph in front of a SEPTA bus -- the Zoo! (is that you Don?) -- disfigured tree surgeons (AND THE NIGHT BRINGS CHARLIE) -- The Time Warp! -- What is the hypergeometric theorum? -- Mr Fishie Loves you! -- Free period with a credit! -- GREASE (Either watch it or we'll sing the sound of music!) -- "Punch is necessary with floating orange things!" -- Storming the White House! -- The failed video yearbook -- 2 cheeseburger meal, again. NO BILLY JOEL! -- Oh, what a night! (Joey) -- TV Studio lunches - Elias, TED and ZED bashing! BEAT THE FRESHMAN! -- Chrissy, isn't your career elective in the studio? Oh, God, not Physics! -- Do you like pina coladas? -- Freaking out waiters at Bennigans -- OH GOD HE HAS BREASTS! -- Junior Prom with Tommy - an evening we both experienced -- Semi-formal YMCA -- Let's do the Hokey Pokey -- Shooting peas out of your nose! Ready, aim, fire! -- Are you girls supposed to be in class? No, we don't go here! (Duh!) -- Koosh ball baseball! -- Infomercials at 4am -- What happens when you OD on caffeine? -- Andre! -- The Real World! -- TANG -- Juggling (or trying to) at Natural Wonders -- "Gonna kill my parents, yes Satan!" -- Pete: the Long Island guy who I kinda forgot what he looked like, oops -- Let's go to Genuardi's and hang out! -- Salute the Flag! -- Be One with God!

My God Christine! I could go on forever writing out all of our inside jokes and old silly stories! We've had some wonderful years! I will miss you so much next year! You better write and call and email ALOT and I'll try and visit. I love you.

Love,
Gretchen

PS -- I'm gonna be a senior! :)

More pictures

2006-09-11T01:14:00.000-07:00

Gretchen outside of the TV Studio. I really like this picture but it probably makes me the saddest of all. She just looks so grown up and capable. She was good in the studio -- it was one of the things that didn't seem to ever bore her and she was good at it. I always wonder how things would have turned out differently if she had finished college.

This is Gretchen somewhere in Chesterbrook. Down Bradford. One week, we were bored after school and we just ran around taking pictures in Chesterbrook. I took a lot of pictures of her. I remember that we were so excited to get the pictures developed. I think that this was shortly after we became friends. I was probably 13 or 14 and Gretch was a year younger. We met because Jen Hartman and Rachel became friends and Rachel and Gretchen were friends. So Gretchen and I just started hanging out. She came to a sleepover party at my house and we stayed up all night talking (and probably annoyed Tiffany Hanson, whose birthday party it was). The next day, we went to go see "Medicine Man" at the movies. I'm pretty sure that we were attached at the hip (or at least the phone cord) after that.

And now I must go to bed. Now that I've figured out the scanner, I'll post more photos.

I love you Gretchen. And I miss you.
Christine

This is the picture

2006-09-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

This is the picture that I was talking about.
-Christine

The happy memories make me sad

2006-09-11T00:32:00.000-07:00

It's just beginning to sink in that she's not coming back. She was so often gone -- times when we just weren't in touch and I hadn't heard from her in forever -- that it's kind of felt like that since I heard. But I was writing a note to Shannon tonight and it just began to sink in that she's really gone. I'm not going to get some weird middle of the night phone call from her. I dug out all of my old pictures tonight. I'm not even unpacked in my new apartment and I have half a dozen half unpacked boxes strewn about my living room as I hunted for pictures and old yearbooks. I found most of them. There was one picture of Gretchen in particular that I was looking for -- it was from homecoming of probably 1993. She went with the exchange student from Austria whose name I forget. She wore this silver dress that, when she spun (and Gretchen liked to spin) flashed everything -- so she bought a pair of silk boxers to wear under the dress (Gretch was always a pro with lingerie). They were blue with moons and shooting stars on them. And I have a picture of her from after the dance -- we're in the parking lot of Bennigans at the mall -- she's wearing someone's leather jacket and she's pulled up her skirt to flash her boxers at me. And she's just laughing. *sigh*

I'll probably post some more photos and stuff later.

Light The Night donation information

2006-09-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

heres the address, if anyone wants to donate for leukemia online:

http://www.active.com/donate/ltnMelvil/1929_amybrower

to register for the walk, press "JOIN", press "TEAM CAPTAIN NAME",put in "AMY BROWER",
GRETCHENS GIRLS WILL APPEAR

Gretchen's Star

2006-09-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

The Wedding

2006-09-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

I had dinner with Dave last Monday, in New York, on my way back from Boston. It was supposed to be a couple of hours, but we wound up talking much of the night. I hope that I didn't make him late for work. We talked about who she was, and why she chose to leave us all, and whether or not she knew we loved her. There aren't many answers. Just bits of information that I'm trying to assemble in my head to make up the whole person that she was. I can't do it alone. I can only contribute some of my own memories, and, since I think we've all had enough sadness in the past couple of weeks, I'm going to write about something happy, Gretchen's wedding. (Yes, I'm aware of how things turned out, and that Gretchen's relationship with Dave was tulmultuous, especially in recent years, but it's a happy memory of a time in her life when Gretchen was very happy. It's a fragment. That's all.)

I don't think Gretchen and Dave really wanted a big wedding, although I think part of Gretchen always wanted to be a bride. I remember when she called me to tell me about the wedding. It had come together so quickly. She and Dave's mom had thrown it together in a whirlwind of planning. She got her dress, they had the country club picked out, she was very excited about the sushi station. Gretchen spoke so highly of Dave's mom. She hadn't been able to experience this with her own mom, and I think that Dave's mom stepping in and shopping and planning with her overwhelmed her in a way she didn't often get overwhelmed.

Langdon and I left from Conshohocken for Long Island on Saturday afternoon. (Funny that we both live here now- I think Langdon had only just moved here at the time and now we've been neighbors for a year!) We would be meeting Christine and Gretchen for dinner with Gretchen's friends and then a bachelorette-type-sendoff, but it was the night before the wedding, so no real craziness, just good friends and wine and pajamas. Gretchen looked so happy. The apartment was characteristically messy, I don't think Gretchen was ever big on neatness, and wedding gifts were strewn throughout the rooms. Langdon and I presented Gretchen with the mix cd we'd made for the occasion: Bon Jovi, Poison, Franki Valli's "Oh What a Night", "November Rain", some INXS... (Langdon, Christine, do you have the Gretchen's Wedding Mix? I don't know where my copy went. And what were we looking for all over that CVS all evening? I think it might have been for me, but I remember being in there for ages.)

There was music and wine and old pictures, and a group photo attempt at capturing all of the tattoos which bordered on NC-17, but was really just strange and didn't work, and instead, looks like a pile of girls in pajamas having a great time. It was the last of the great sleepovers we had. The night wore on, and we continued drinking. Christine found a bottle of Black Haus Schnapps, which seemed like a good idea at the time, and Gretchen and I broke one of the wedding gifts, a wine glass, by toasting her impending marriage a little too enthusiastically. We drank a very nice bottle of champagne and got giddy. The evening ended when Gretchen passed out, and Christine, Langdon and I carried her by her arms and legs to bed, accidentally running her into the microwave. Fortunately, she had no bruises the next morning. Langdon and Christine stayed up a bit later, but I passed out next to Gretchen, so I was there in the morning to see how excited she was when she woke up. She was remarkably un-hungover given the send-off into married life we'd given her the night before.

Hair and makeup at the apartment. They did something incredibly elaborate to Gretchen's hair that took hours. She had so much hair. As the first of us to do this, I think we asked her a number of questions along the lines of "Are you nervous? Do you have any doubts?" more out of curiosity than any doubt in our minds. She had no doubts. She wasn't nervous at all. She was completely confident and looking forward to her big day. After the primping, we gathered the dress and various other implements of bridalness and piled them into our cars and drove over to the country club. I beleive that I rode with Langdon and Gretchen with Christine.

We had a small suite of rooms on the third floor, sort of like a hotel with a sitting room and low ceilings. We got Gretchen into her dress, and Christine established herself as an authority on complicated underwear. It's no wonder Christine is in so many weddings... she's quite good at figuring out what snaps into what and how to attach everything. We took some pictures on the stairs, and then met Dave and the boys in the lobby. Langdon, Christine and I all immediatly developed gay-boy crushes on a couple of Dave's friends, and followed them around for the rest of the wedding. Gay boys make the best dance partners.

Gretchen's father walked her down the aisle. The ceremony was short. I remember watching Gretchen and Dave up there, and thinking back to a conversation I had with Dave the weekend I met him. I had no doubt whatsoever about Dave. I felt completely confident that she was marrying someone who loved her for all of the right reasons, someone who knew her as well as any of us could ever hope to. They stepped back on the glass, wrapped in a paper bag, and it shattered, and the party started. I almost cried when she danced with her father. It meant so much to her, that he and Shannon were there to be part of this part of her life. The first dance where Gretchen came over and joined us was to "I Will Survive" which seemed a little funny at a wedding, but she loved it and she somehow managed to dance in that dress. We did eventually have to excuse ourselves for a little while to take her upstairs and get her some air- loosening that crazy undergarment for a bit.

Gretchen went into her marriage the same way she went into most things, completely enthusiastic, bright and shining with no reservations. She was so confident, and, I think, very much in love and happy. She was surrounded by people who loved her. I think it was one of the happiest times of her life.

I have a lot of pictures. I have to scan most of them. I'm back home now, and I don't have company for the first time since I learned the news from Christine's mom two weeks ago. I'll get to scanning and posting this week.

Thanks

2006-09-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

I have gone through the entries on this blog over and over again and it's great to see how many people loved Gretchen. Some of you I have met, others I haven't. Each time I read the entries on Gretchen's Page it puts me in tears. None of us ever understood the demons Gretchen faced and none of ever will. She meant a lot to all of us, but I don't know if she ever realized how much her friends and her family loved her and cared about her. To this day, I will never understand why she lost touch with us for two years when I was fighting for my life. One of my friends made a comment that sent chills up my spine. She said, "One sister fought so hard to live, while the other sister fought so hard to die." I will never understand why she could just disappear for months on end and not let us know how she was doing, call or even send an email.
Gretchen, how could you do this again? Why did you have to succeed this time? From the few emails I have received from Misha he truly loved you and from what dad told me Julie said about your party you seemed so happy. You had your whole life ahead of you. I know when you turned 25 you called me and told me how you thought you were so old at 25 and you pointed out how you were halfway to 50 already. I teased you and said well you will always be a year ahead of me. How can your 28th birthday be the end? Your life was way to short. You were intelligent, beautiful and you had your whole life ahead of you.
I was never able to tell you John and I are now engaged and you won't be around to see me walk down the aisle.
Everytime you disappeared you always showed up and we could catch up on everything we had missed and now we can't. You would be so proud of Tedd, he finally graduated from Southern Oregon University and he has grown up a lot. You can actually have an adult conversation with him and his replies are full sentences. You never found out I got promoted to Interim Unit Executive Director in my office. I wasn't given the official position because my boss knew due to my engagement, I'd eventually go to Orlando to be with John. But I couldn't have asked for a better job or co-workers. It's the best job for me in the world. What could be better than meeting other cancer survivors, sharing our survival stories and having fun at the Relay For Life events. I was even given an award for my dedication to the American Cancer Society and getting the LaBelle Relay For Life back on their feet and getting the Charlotte County Relay For Life back on track after Hurricane Charlie.
I have so much more to say to you Gretchen but I can't think right now....

Remembering Gretchen in Philadelphia, update

2006-09-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

It seems that it would be better for people to have something around Christmas here in Philadelphia. Does anyone have preferences for dates? Perhaps the weekend before Christmas?

Remembering Gretchen in Philadelphia

2006-09-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

How do those of us in the Philadelphia area feel about having a dinner to remember Gretchen over Thanksgiving weekend? Thanksgiving is the 23rd, our class reunion is the 24th, so we could have something to remember Gretchen on the 25th. I know it's a lot for one weekend, but it's a time that lots of people will be in town. It will also give those of you who are going to the reunion a separate place in which to talk about and remember Gretchen.

A friend of ours, Jessica (from the picture below with Gretchen and Joe at the Snow Day in May) owns a restaurant in Berwyn, where we went to high school, with a private room, and we could probably arrange to reserve it for the night. We could do some sort of a price fixe menu with a donation to Light the Night built in?

What do you think? Many of you have expressed that you want to do something to remember her. Does this sound like what you had in mind?

Not so sure what to say

2006-09-03T13:37:00.000-07:00

So I have waited to post something, because I am not so sure what i want to say. Even though Gretchen and I had grown apart in recent years we still kept in contact. And I always was interested in hearing from her and finding out what she was up to. I will miss her. So here are some pictures.

There was a question about who was Gretchen's date at a dance and i think this picture answers that. Nope, just looked back this is a different dance.

This is probably the 1st picture I have of Gretchen from when we went to Williamsburg with school, probably 7th grade.

So most things happened at Christine's house just like this. This must have been around the holidays and after high school. Gretchen and I seem to be more interested in something to the right, than the picture.

Gretchen and I, I think at John's house.

2006-09-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

So these are pictures of my visit to Prague and, since people have been asking how she was recently, some stories.

Gretchen was very proud that she learned to cook, even though it was out of necessity, while living in Prague. She invited me and my boyfriend over for dinner (pasta with homemade sauce, it was very good and impressive) and then we played trivial pursuit. We were very nearly deeply embarrassed to lose American trivial pursuit to two European boys, but we pulled off a win at the last minute. The picture on the top left is her with Misha, and the one on the bottom is the two of us.

We went to the zoo the next day, Gretchen and I gushed obnoxiously at all the baby animals, but the best was the petting zoo, especially since we had to harass Misha into getting tons of change so we could feed the animals...and then we got to bother him like small children every time we wanted more animal food. I'm sure no one is surprised, but bothering Misha was one of our favorite past times when we got together. The two pictures on the left are the inter species rape, even though you can't see it that well, the goat is definitely trying to mount the pig.

The two of us at Nebe, for those who don't know, that's where Gretchen bartended. It was Tuesday night, 80's night, and we were very drunk and had a lot of fun...if I remember correctly, which might not be, Misha requested Prince for her that night and she was very happy about it.

Gretchen's birthday party at Nebe. Two of her friends bought her a hamster and the picture on the left is her talking to it. She was very excited because she wanted a pet and hadn't had one since the Sue-Ellen and Pamela hamster drama.

Gretchen and Misha.

Fearless...

2006-09-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

I spent a long time think of what to say and how to convey; who was, is Gretchen. Stories of times we spent together, with friends, as friends, at odds, in love, and in absence. Yet again, She has managed to keep me speechless far longer then I am comfortable.

So I have asked myself, what do I say about the woman I called friend, lover, girlfriend, wife and ex. I could bore you all with stories of concerts, dinners, paintball, Amsterdam and more. But that won’t let you know who she was, just what she did.

Gretchen was and always will be a diacritic mark in my life. She brought an energy and passion to everyone she meet, even if it was not her own. If you were looking for someone to fight with, laugh with or smile with, she was the person to seek.

To say she was magnetic does not fairly place her. She was entrancing. She was more then the center of attention; at times she was the center of the universe. Time spent with her would pass at break neck speed.

She was a stubborn & unbending fool at times over trivial things. On the converse, she would break her back trying to help those she disagreed with most. This dyad nature in which she existed consumed most of her life.

Why Gretchen left us all, the way she chose to, may never become clear. I can say this; there is nothing on this good earth or in the heavens and hells in which we live that will make up for this loss.

I will share some of the brighter moments of the time we spent together on another day. I hope some day to meet friends and loved ones she made after the two of us had parted ways.

All that said, there is a song by Pink Floyd titled “Fearless” that may best show Her persona. Lyrics bellow.

You say the hill's too steep to climb,
Climb it!
You say you'd like to see me try,
Climb it!
You pick the place and I'll choose the time
And I'll climb
The hill in my own way
Just wait a while, for the right day
And as I rise above the tree line and the clouds
I look down hear the sound of the things you said today
Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd, smiling
Emotionless the magistrate turns 'round, frowning

And who's the fool who wears the crown
Go down in your own way
And everyday is the right day
And as you rise above the fear lines in the frown
You look down
Hear the sound of the faces in the crowd

This picture was tacken out side the Vatacain with the memebers of the Papal Guard.

Just after taking this picture, Gretchen turned to me and said "and you thought the uniform I have to wear to work is bad."

-Dave

Gretchen and Megan

2006-09-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

I have no idea when this picture happened. Clearly, I need some kind of chart of Gretchen's haircolors -- when was short and red?

I'm pretty sure that this was during a party at my parents' house (that's in my mom's kitchen). I can't say why the feather boa came out (it's mine -- I still have it). Megan is wearing some kickass sunglasses too (she's not outgrown that, thankfully).

This might have been one of the pictures that led Megan to decide that we all looked like we were in the cast of "Reality Bites."

Halloween 1991

2006-09-02T19:33:00.000-07:00

This is me and Gretchen dressed up for Halloween when I was in 9th grade and she was in 8th grade (I think).

We planned our costumes as opposites -- I was evil and she was good. We're sitting on the front step of my parents' house in Chesterbrook.

2006-09-02T19:29:00.000-07:00

Me, Megan, and Gretchen at my Junior Prom. I like that I'm the only Junior. I'm trying to remember who we all went with and I really can't. I know that I went with Tommy Kelleher. I think that Megan went with Gaetan. Who was Gretchen's date?

I'm always amazed to look back at all of these pictures and see how damn *good* we all looked. I remember being so self-conscious at the time. I'm not sure that Gretchen was ever self-conscious though.

Agnostic's Kaddish, for Gretchen by Eve

2006-09-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

AGNOSTIC'S KADDISH

Some told me that you're in a place
Of gold and angel song
Some told me that you're paying now
For all that you did wrong
Some say you fell asleep into
A quiet and endless night
I only know you've gone away
And will not ever write

Some say you're watching over us
Protecting us from harm
Some say you're now a newborn
Sleeping in your mother's arms
Some tell me that you've gone to where
There is no death or pain
I only know that I will never
Hear your laugh again

Some say you're in a happy place
Of pretty girls and wine
Some say you've joined a sphere of light
Outside of space and time
Some talk of sure and certain hope
They know that it is so
I only know that you are gone
To where I cannot go

Photos

2006-09-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

I see we already have some photos of Gretchen at Hooters, so I figured I'd post some of her all dressed up at my wedding. She was one of my bridesmaids. Truth be told, I don't think I can find the Hooter pics. I'll see if I can dig up some more at other events.

The conga line

Gretchen and Sassy

Entering the reception hall

Posts/Photos/FAQ

2006-08-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

Posts: Thanks to everyone who is posting and sending me stuff. I'm doing my best to get it on the page within a couple of hours of receiving it. Tomorrow, I start my day with a six hour flight, and finish it with a six hour drive, so my internet access is going to be limited. Please bear with me. I'll post everything you send as soon as I get where I'm going. In the meantime, you are, of course, welcome to post things. If you need me to send you an invitation to join the blog, please send me your email address.

Photos: I'm traveling with a laptop that doesn't have photoediting software. I know that some of the pictures are sideways. I'll fix them when I get home.

Thanks everyone for you emails and phone calls, text messages and IM's. They mean a lot to me.

To clear up a couple of frequently asked questions:

Who am I? Gretchen's friend Megan from high school. Yes, you may have met me in Long Island on one of a few of occasions, possibly at the wedding. I was one of the three high school friends, but not the one who wound up leading the Horah. That was Christine.

How am I doing? I'm okay, thanks. Honestly, I don't think it's hit me yet. I left for a business trip eight hours after hearing the news, and so I haven't had a chance to go through my own yearbooks, notes, photo albums. I'm sure that there will be some tearful posts later on, once I'm home.

What are the various memorial services and events taking place to remember Gretchen? To my understanding, the family memorial service is private. Gretchen will be buried next to her mom in Alabama. I think that's very appropriate and would make her happy. Amy is coordinating the Leukemia walk at Hofstra. Read the previous post about it. Dave and several of Gretchen's Long Island friends are planning to get together this Sunday. I don't know the details, but if someone sends me info, I'll post it. I would like to do something in Philadelphia for Gretchen's high school friends. Is anyone already working on something? I'm thinking a benefit dinner for us to get together, remember Gretchen and raise money for Light the Night, the charity she volunteered for when she lived in New York, probably sometime around Thanksgiving (which is also the weekend of our ten-year high school reunion- no, I'm not going) or Christmas, because people will be in town. If anyone has thoughts, or wants to communicate information about any other events, please email me, or go ahead and post.

Again, thanks everyone.

Star Certificate and Photos from Amy

2006-08-31T17:26:00.000-07:00

I BOUGHT GRETCHEN A STAR AND WILL HANG IT IN HOOTERS, W/ HER PIC.
ILL TAKE A PIC. OF IT, WHEN ITS ALL DONE. (from Amy)

Photos from High School

2006-08-31T13:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics from high school. The first is from our Senior Picnic. They called it "Snow Day in May." There's Jessica, Gretchen, and Joe. The second pic is from Denny's. Ahhhh Denny's.... That's Rick, Gretchen, John, and Tom.

Photo from Amy of Gretchen and her co-workers

2006-08-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

Photos from Dave

2006-08-30T22:50:00.000-07:00

There are some pictures Dave sent to me to post.

A Photo from Amy

2006-08-30T22:49:00.000-07:00

Leukemia Walk at Hofstra

2006-08-30T15:02:00.000-07:00

Amy posted this comment on the first entry. I am reposting it here so that no one misses it. -Megan

"Hi Everyone,
We are doing a lukemia walk in honor of Gretchen. Since she did this every year we thought we would walk in her place this year. The walk is on Sept. 28, 2006 @ Hofstra University. I will be holding the $ for the donation fees, if interested please contact me, 631-455-2483. Registration starts @ 5:30 p.m., I will be getting there earlier, to hand in the $ collected from the donations. Shirts and balloons will be given out at registration. There will be coffee, and an area for kids, face painting, and sand art.Our team name is "Gretchens Girls". The walk is 1-2 miles, it will be over by 8:30.I will also be selling paper balloons to hang up, behind the bar of Hooters. they too, will be collected Sept.28 and handed in. So please, Gretchen would liked that everyone got together this for 1 day and did something that meant a lot to her. I would appreciate it if you can please pass this around and let people know about the walk.Thank You.
Amy"

The Gretchen and Megan Film Festival of 1993

2006-08-29T20:24:00.000-07:00

I believe that the first time I spent the night at Gretchen's was in 1993. For the occasion, we rented Better Off Dead, Harold and Maude and The Suicide Club... weren't we clever little fifteen-year-olds? It's things like this that make me wonder if I should be furious with myself, or if I should see the irony and smirk a little bit at it, because that's probably what Gretchen would be doing. Our friendship often veered towards the morbid, and we could match each other's dark humor, barb for barb. She was one of the most intelligent and witty people I have known, and that's saying a lot. I shouldn't wonder why there aren't rainbows and sunshine and puppies in my memories of Gretchen. It's not who she was.

I'm 3000 miles from home right now. When I get home, I'll get to the yearbooks and the photo albums and the shoesboxes of notes (yes, notes) about God-knows-what, and I'll re-learn to play Total Eclipse of the Heart for her on the piano. She used to call me, in the middle of the night, at my parents' house, and ask me to put the phone on speaker and play it for her. My parents were always so thrilled. I can't remember if she wanted to sing along to it, or if she just wanted to hear it, or if she just wanted to know that I would play it for her if she asked. I would. Any time. She knew that.

Is anyone blaming themselves, or asking themselves if there's something that we could have done? I started down that route, but really, I think that Gretchen just caught up with herself. Maybe, like our morbid little film festival back in 1993, she's in on her own joke and the rest of us aren't? And at least, I'm sure she's at peace, maybe for the first time since I met her in gym class sophomore year of high school.

I'll write more. It's hard at first. I remember last year, when Patrick died, I wrote one sentence and then couldn't write a thing about it for a few weeks, and then, suddenly, the dam burst and I couldn't stop writing. The validation and friendship that I got back from his friends and family, who were reading my writing on a website much like this one, had a lot to do with my grieving process. It's why I set this page up for us. If you feel like writing, write, post, talk, remember, whenever you're ready. And if not, that's okay, too, just check in and read the fragments and memories. We loved her. I do think that she knew that. I think that's important.

Happy Birthday Gretchen

2006-08-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

This is a picture from the "Royal Ball" -- a 'semi-formal' birthday party that Gretchen and I had. Because our birthdays were only about a week apart, we usually had joint parties at my house. It was my 17th birthday and Gretchen's 16th.

For those who might not know, the front row (L to R) is Julie, Langdon, and Angela. Then Tommy and Gretchen in the middle with Chris and Aimee in the back.

I have some more photos scanned in and I'll post them later. I'll probably go through my old pictures when I get back to Austin too.

Gretchen's Blog

2006-08-28T23:44:00.000-07:00

http://praguegretchen.livejournal.com/

2006-08-28T22:36:00.000-07:00

Remembering Gretchen

2006-08-28T22:16:00.000-07:00

This page is for friends of Gretchen Garrison Kaminsky to share their stories and memories. Gretchen's friends are scattered throughout the world, from New Orleans, to Berwyn, to Long Island to Prague. I hope that this page enables us to remember Gretchen together, even though most of us will probably never meet.

You are welcome to create an account and I will give you access to the blog, or, if you would rather email me your thoughts, I will be happy to post for you. You can email me at megan_m_young@hotmail.com.