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Today, I have to say goodbye to one of the most influential and all-around best people I’ve ever been lucky enough to know. While I still cannot understand or believe what’s happened, I have so much to say that I haven’t been able to get out and I felt that I had to write at least a fragment of it down. 

I met Sarah when I was in first grade. It was probably our first day of class that we decided to become best friends. When I met her parents soon after, I knew I had definitely made the right decision on choosing my new BFF. Sarah was lucky enough to have Dennis as her father and I was lucky enough to have Dennis as my childhood best friend’s dad. My memories involving Dennis are not so much memories with him, but rather the amazing memories he helped create with Sarah and our friends. Having such a strange, hilarious man around could only foster equally strange and hilarious times. Dennis inspired Sarah and our friends to be unique, creative, and the weirder the better when we would entertain ourselves. Trips to Leon’s to get frozen custard were often. I vividly remember sitting in the van as we would listen to and hysterically laugh at his commentary on all of the other poor souls that decided to go to the ice cream stand that day. And on summer days after it would rain, Dennis would take us kids to the lake and play in the mud. Why this simple activity of stomping our feet and getting filthy in wet goo was so fun, I have no idea, but the beauty of having Dennis around as a kid was that he fostered our imaginations and taught us how to take simple things and make them brilliant. He not only allowed us, but encouraged Sarah and Paul’s friends, to dress in his band’s costumes. Sarah and I even wrote and recorded some of our own outstanding songs in his basement studio, and who could forget the dynamic trio of The Silver Sisters? Luckily, Dennis never missed moments like these. While it saddens me that I don’t have a photo with him, all of the pictures and videos he captured of Sarah and me well make up for it. I sincerely could not imagine my childhood and adolescence without him, and I truly believe I would not have been the same person if I had never met him.

So, Dennis, thank you for all the priceless moments you helped me to create as a kid. Thank you for helping your children become the people that they are today and for making one of my dearest friends the beautiful person that she is. Thank you for perpetually making me laugh whenever I was around you. Thank you for your oddness and for your inspiration. You would be impossible to forget, and I will forever appreciate the warmth, genuine positivity, and sincerity you carried with you.  You left us far too early, but I know that your presence will be carried on within everyone who understood you and loved you. Thank you for everything. You will be greatly missed.

Posted 11 months ago with 2 notes
Tags: personal  Dennis Flemion