Eulogy by Chris Gilsenan
Hello I am Chris Gilsenan, long-time friend, travel buddy and neighbor to Tricia. It is nice to see each of you here today, to see how well-loved she is.
There is something that I wanted to say to Tricia’s parents during a visit a few years ago, and I will say it now: Most of us can name one or two favorite people. Tricia skewed that curve – she is obviously a favorite of so many.
Over the past eight years, Cindy and I hosted many house dinners, with a wide variety of guests. If we had 100 dinners, Tricia was at 90 of them. Always invited, always on time, fashionable of course and never empty-handed.
She specialized in witty banter with new and old friends and always helped clean before we all relocated to the upstairs lounge for the rest of the evening.
Eventually she would disappear, vanishing into the night before anyone noticed.
Trish specialized in the Irish Goodbye. “POOF!” she was gone. Sometimes I was able to catch her in the act and walk her home.
I knew even then how valuable those times were, and I would do anything to walk her home once again, arm in arm.
I am sorry that we did not catch her this time. She accidentally pulled the ultimate Irish Goodbye on all of us, escaping on her own terms and signature style.
(Fist in the air)
Without a doubt, her energy is still right here with us. Many of us have seen it and we have felt it.
Life is short and unpredictable. We are all moving forward together toward unseen individual finish lines, sometimes suddenly or apparently at random.
What do we choose to do with this reality?
How have we chosen to act on this recently?
What did Tricia O’Connor teach us?
In the days after the event, I had that question rattling around in my mind and was formulating an answer that might make sense to me. Maybe not an original first-ever grieving process thought, but it was starting to feel right.
One week after the incident, Cindy and I made the mistake of going out to a large public fundraising event and were quickly overrun with unwelcome and uncomfortable condolences. We were not ready yet.
We left within twenty minutes, Cindy in tears and me physically threatening a guy for refusing to change this topic of conversation.
However…. the very first person I ran into that night was a woman that I had not seen in years. She and Tricia and I go all the way back to the first year of the Deep End Camp at Burning Man in 2002.
I do not know why either of us ended up at a random fundraiser that night, but we quickly gripped each other and she said to me the very words that had been forming in my own head that week:
She said, “I believe that we are all going to hold each other more closely and more expressively than before.”
……………………………….
If this is the lesson that we choose to learn and act upon individually and collectively, then Tricia’s loss is not a permanent void in our lives.
Nope.
Holding each more closely and more expressively may be the lesson and the legacy that Tricia gifted us.
Well played, Tricia, well played.
You ghost!
And yes, I can hear you cackling at us now, probably photobombing your way around this room….
Tricia was a physical work of art, a masterpiece, super photogenic. If I may plagiarize from Piper today, she was Best In Show. In the huge set of photos scrolling across the projection screen, did you notice any outliers?
That’s right. There are a couple of photos of The Golden Girls from the 1980s TV series.
A few years ago I spotted a life-sized cardboard cutout of these four lovely women and had a realization and a big laugh. I snapped a photo and sent to Trishee with this explanation:
“Look, Trishee – this is us, we are the Golden Girls! You, Cindy, Dorothy, and me, 40 years from now – traveling the world, long martini brunches, silly late-night chatter.
Swapping clunky grandma sunglasses and pearls, talking about our bunions or about the hot young orthopedic surgeon that replaced our hips or knees…. and squeezing Dorothy for tales of her latest adventures.”
Trish of course still wearing the same size dress if not her actual cocktail dresses from college…..
……………………………………….
We all know this woman came with a 100-year warranty. Look at her. Clearly, she had 50 more years on those tires.
So I met with the manufacturers (Sally and Terry,) asking them to rummage around in a storage area for a backup copy of Tricia, PLEASE!
Alas….it turns out that our girl was an exotic prototype, a singular design, a production run of exactly One.
No spare copies, nothing in stock.
……………………….
We lost our Golden Girl.
……………………..
Let us move forward together and integrate what you choose to believe Tricia has taught us.
Thank you all for being here.