Eulogy by Bruce Penn
1. Intro
Hello everyone. For those of you who may not know me, my name is Bruce Penn, and for those of you who do know me, my name is also Bruce Penn, weird how that happens. I am honored to be standing up here today to pay tribute to our very dear friend, Trishie. I’ve been friends with Trishie for 23 years, and I’m so grateful that I can say that.
2. Body
As we all know, it is just so unbelievably, unfathomable as to why we are all here today, but well, we are. Trishie’s passing has been, by far, the deepest emotional cut that I have ever experienced, and I’m aware that it has been for so many of us in this room. It cannot be said enough how much she impacted our lives with love, positivity, laughter, support, countless shenanigans, and of course, her “puniness”. She was one of the funniest humans to ever walk this earth, and I miss her so very much.
Trishie was going to skip “The Burning Man” this year and come visit her LA friends and stay at my place in Marina del Rey (a.k.a Marina del Penn, Penn Station, and, of course, Club Penn LA) with my lady-friend Pip and I (I’m way too old to say girlfriend), but instead, she somehow got wrangled into going to The Burn, shocking. And, I’m glad that she did, as several of you here have mentioned how much fun you had with her, and what a light she was to be with at “Muddy Man”.
She was then going to come down and stay with us the September 15th weekend, but her plans changed again so she stayed back here in San Francisco, I sure wish she would have come down to LA.
We all have so many stories of our time with Trishie, and many will be shared after the ceremony, but I’d like to share one in which she provided such incredible support for me during a challenging time.
When I moved back to LA in October of 2021, one of my goals was to host my first Southern California Super Bowl Party, which was held in February of 2022. 20-30 of my San Francisco peeps, many of you in this room, came down to help get my place ready, and Trishie was one of them. She was actually the first to come down, and because of that, she was lucky enough to make several trips to Bed Bath and Beyond with me, it was hysterical. We couldn’t
stop laughing about how we never thought that we’d be buying curtains, blackout of course, a toaster oven, and several other household items that were needed to host 50 people at my place. One of her quotes from that weekend, in which she said very sternly, was, “Bruce, my job is to make sure that you eat and sleep so that you’re ready to host Super Bowl on Sunday!”. And although those are two things that I’m not really known for, I decided that it was best to listen to Trishie.
I’m confident that Trishie would want us to celebrate her love for dance, community, connection, and clever, clever banter. She was/is one in a billion, the number of laughs that she was the source of is uncountable.
3. Lesson
Soooo…, how do we somehow grow from Trishie’s passing? We’ve all been pondering that this past month and a half. How about, we step up and be adults and address situations that can be mitigated by simply being open to seeing things through the other person’s eyes, knowing that at the end of the day, we’re all on the same team, or, we can be. How about putting the resentment and any petty drama behind you, and reaching out to that friend in which you have both distanced yourselves from each other, but just couldn’t go there. How about going outside of yourself, and recognizing that all it takes is to put aside our egos so that we can have conversations that break down barriers that can simply be overcome by showing mutual respect, by stepping up and putting aside differences that are based on another time. We need each other, now. Trishie’s moving on is a catalyst for all of us to love each other and our families as best as we can, and to be grateful for what we have, because things can change, as we all know, in an instant.
4. Closing
In closing, I’d like to share a dream that my lady-friend Pip had in which Trishie came to her shortly after Trishie’s passing. As I was such a wreck, Pip held off telling me for a week, but this is her recollection of her dream:
“Trishie is OK. She said that there is a God and Heaven is colors. She likes it over there and I got the sense that she enjoyed hopping around. She said, I was never meant to grow old. She hugged me. She looked beautiful and radiant.”
She is OK. We may not be, but she is OK. Love you all.