Dear Barry,
I’ve been putting this off ever since I got the news that
you were gone.
I remember your office in the back of the Continuing
Education suite at Paramita. No windows,
none needed, work was done in there and you came out from time to time, as
needed. I remember you pushing dirt and
gravel with your feet behind the building, behind the Cork, smoking, laughing like
you did, sudden, breathy, I can’t quite imitate it.
I remember you installing the ceiling fan in our first
townhouse, I asked, “will it hold?” you said “oh yeah, sure, I think” and then laughed
like you did. It held.
I remember you going in for open heart surgery, you gave us
each a wooden heart with our names on it- I put mine behind the walls, in the
foundation of that townhouse to make sure you were a part of my foundation,
your are.
I jump ahead to the present, I’m at a large college and
still there is no good solution for an ERP/CRM for Continuing Education save
for what you created in 1998 in Lotus Approach.
You kept supporting your software solution (creation) after you moved away, after you moved
back and after IT ordered you not support it as it was way outside of your normal duties. You kept supporting the system as you knew without your system
NUCE could not serve its students. You
slept on the couch at Sangha House to save us money, you worked for free when we
couldn’t pay you, you smoked cigarettes in the parking lot, you laughed, you
made others laugh, you gave of yourself again and again.
Years pass, miles divide us and here I am writing a thank you,
an apology after you are gone. I wish I
could have done something to ease your pain. You showed up time and time again for all of
us… I hope you took with you some sense of the joy and love you spread. I want to go back to our Longmont townhouse
and tear open the walls to find the cracked wooden heart that bears our
names. Maybe if I held that small token my heart would not ache like it does.
I miss you Barry. I
love you. You were a mentor to me, a big
brother and a friend.
