Valerie
I remember first meeting Eric, David and Laurie at PRI at the first parent workshop after my son, Brendan, and Eric entered the program. Eric was so quiet. I’m not sure I heard him speak the entire two days. I remember that being really painful for Laurie and David as the other boys shared affirmations with each other and with their parents. We often saw Eric at Sunday brunches in the months to follow and saw his true, beautiful and charming self slowly emerging. At the next parent workshop many months later I walked into the classroom where team 2 was meeting and Eric crossed the room, greeted me and reached his hand out introducing himself with the most beautiful smile. I said “I know who you are, Eric”. He said, “Oh. I wasn’t sure.” I replied, “But it sure is nice to talk to you”. That smile of his was breathtaking. And what a transformation!
I remember Eric’s first outing from PRI with David and Laurie. It was a momentous occasion and somehow a few of us ended up at Boston Pizza in Orangeville for lunch. It felt good… safe… like family.
There was another weekend that I visited PRI to see Brendan and planned to take him to Orangeville to kick around for the day, have lunch… Eric joined us and it was such a lovely, natural, peaceful outing. The boys just walked together. We had lunch at Kelsey’s, window shopped, hit a couple of nice stores (Eric certainly had great taste and fashion sense!). As we were getting ready to head back to PRI I suggested we grab Starbucks for the drive. Eric was so appreciative of me bringing him on our outing and taking him out for lunch that he insisted on buying my latte. He seemed really proud to do that. It meant so much to me.
Such a tremendous loss of a beautiful and gentle spirit.
Tuesday February 10, 2015 at 11:07 am
