Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Reflecting on someone's life has a peculiar tendency to focus on small, sometimes distant, but telling memories. Late summer of 1991 I had just moved back to Canarsie having spent the previous eight years going to college and then working in the Boston area. Having been away for so many years and feeling like a stranger in a strange land, who do I get a call from within days? My younger cousin Patsy, welcoming me back and saying he'll be by Friday evening to take me out. We went into the city and had a great
time, Patsy insisting on paying for everything and stopping at Ferrara's, where he worked at the time, to "make a box" of pastries to bring home to my mother. That was Patsy, as bighearted, thoughtful and affectionate a person as you could ever know. I'm shocked and saddened that he's gone, and so young, and by the void that it leaves in so many lives. But a life
shouldn't be measured by its length, which we can't control, but by its impact on others, which we can. In this respect, his life was unimaginably rich, we should all be so fortunate. I'm grateful to have known him and proud to call him my cousin.
With love,
John, Alanna, Raquel and Gina Gilson
