Remembrance

My friend Junior who just died, his wife requested that friends share their memories of him on the permanent obituary page for family members who aren't on Facebook so, I drafted this to share. The photos here are slightly different from the ones I posted there.

I met Eric in the summer of 2007 when he was 21 years old. I was one of the Stage Managers and he was the Assistant Technical Director at TriArts Sharon Playhouse in the northwest corner of Connecticut. Working at TriArts was a little bit like summer camp: a few months away from real life where all we did was put on musicals in a theater that used to be a barn. We lived in a little dorm across the parking lot and spent all of our time, on and off work, together. 

I worked there 3 summers, but 2007 was really unique. The crew had already begun bonding before I arrived, and someone had already given Eric the nickname we would know him by: Junior (because we already had an Erik). 

Even after all these years, it’s hard to find the right words to describe how special that 2007 crew was. We navigated some challenging situations like a bat flying into the theater during tech rehearsal or the theatre roof collapsing during an incredibly difficult changeover. We also had fun together attending pool parties at board members' houses on our days off, setting up a freestanding fire pit in the backyard of the dorm, and creating a kickball league and making matching shirts. After shared experiences like those, we all formed a strong bond. 

The whole lot of us basically became like a family that summer, and in particular, Eric and I became great friends. He helped me wrangle drunk teenagers after a cast party, and we playfully argued about which was better: Jack Daniels or Makers Mark Our friendship was solidified late in the summer when we learned that we had the same birthday and we both liked the band Dashboard Confessional.

We kept in touch during his senior year at Keene, including a mini reunion over Spring Break with some Triarts friends in New York City on our birthday. When I returned to TriArts the following summer, though he did not return on the crew, Eric came up to visit a few times to play kickball, to see a show, and even picked up a few overhire shifts during a changeover. We ended up dating for a couple months but broke up early in the fall of 2008 and fell out of touch for many years.

At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, he reached out on our birthday to wish me a happy 40th. Especially at such an uncertain and scary time, I was glad to hear from him, to know he was ok, and to reconnect briefly after so much time.

Last year when I heard about his diagnosis and sent my condolences, Eric mentioned that he still had his t-shirt from the kickball league we formed at TriArts. I like to think that's a testament to how indescribably special that 2007 crew had been.

This March, we wished each other happy birthday for the last time.

In a way, I feel lucky. For me, Eric is frozen in time in the summers of 2007 and 2008. He is forever young and healthy: putting on musicals in a barn, playing kickball games in a gravel parking lot, sipping whiskey at a post-show bonfire, and singing along to Dashboard Confessional CDs in his Intrigue. I'll always remember him that way.