Deepest sympathies to the Gilmore family on the loss of Christopher.
What a life, Chris. So sorry I missed so much of it. What a great fellow adventurer you'd have been! From what I've learned recently, your's was a life well lived and you, a man well loved. We should all be so fortunate or, more likely, so caring & giving. Just to look at pictures of you still brings a smile to my face. My sincere condolences to the many you've left behind.
Chris and I were team mates on the lacrosse team at William and Mary and went through jump school training together in the army at Ft. Benning, GA in1973. He was a close friend.
Our condolences to Christopher, George and Caroline and the rest of the Gilmore's. He will be missed by all.
Our families were stationed together in Germany, and from there the Gilmore's became our lifelong friends. Our parents continued their friendships back to the states, and both sets of parents are buried at Arlingtion.
Chris and I re-connected over art, and our email conversations evolved to travel, books. sports and each of our children. Chris' sendings were witty, playful, full of life's observations, and always brightened my day.
He will be missed.
For Chris, here is the Henry Van Dyke poem that I read at my mother's memorial:
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."
Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"
Gone from our sight, but welcomed by our parents and our sister Susan.
With love,
Margarete