Pillow Book

From Unspoken

Ed note: This page contains some of the stories that were included in the pillow book created for Patrick's mother, Carol. They are in alphabetical order by the last name of the contributor. Feel free to add your story or thoughts to this page.

---

Patrick worked at Conkeys Bookstore while I was also working there. Everyone LOVED Patrick! One night some of the girls had a hot tub party and it was for "girls only", but we secretly invited Patrick! We had a great time! Everyone is so sad. He will be greatly missed, but so remembered! Barbara (French) Agness

I have a few memories that come to mind when I think of Patrick, and the clearest is when, in high school, he made me and my sister an ornament for the rear-view mirror of our car. (Jessica and I were a year ahead of Patrick in school, and, if I recall, he also worked with us at Conkey's Bookstore.) He had taken a smooth stone and wrapped it in copper wire, then wove the copper wire around wood screws that encircled the stone, so that it looked like a small sun. When he gave it to us, I thought two things: If ever we were in a car accident, this ornament would surely become a dangerous missile, but I also marveled how he could make something so elegant, so utterly charming, out of wire and stone and standard screws. And that he would give it to us. Betsy Athens

(I love you, Patrick....) I have so many fantastic Patrick memories, but here are some of my most beloved: When I was fourteen, Patrick gave me a letter that will always be one of the most special things anyone has ever written to me. I remember running over to his house after reading it, and we stood in the kitchen and cried and cried. Patrick taught me how to make rose petal and rosemary paper with his homemade grid, and when we weren't shredding paper towels we made crayon and sand candle experiments in our kitchens. I also still have one of his handpainted pencil holders, which looks like an octopus with mosaic skin. Pretty much I only associate the Indigo Girls, Pet Shop Boys, Gypsy Kings, and Michelle Shocked with Patrick and our nightly drives on County Z. We used to roll down the windows in his mom's green Jetta just so everyone could hear us belting out our best attempts at Deep Forest pygmy chanting, park it at George Webb on Wisconsin Avenue for soapy coffee and hours of warp speed conversation, and then head to Kaukauna where we'd lie on the hood of the Jetta and stargaze and try to impress each other with our knowledge of phony constellations. Oh my gosh... We were scandalous at Za's. Green Bay never had it so good or so bad. Roxy dog! I remember Patrick playing piano with me and Roxy joyfully (or obliviously) howling along. Patrick, Christoph, Meredith, and I would walk home from Roosevelt and get into all kinds of mayhem. My sister was always in love with Patrick--especially because he taught her how to make origami animals when she was three. That was love. As a family we also would go to Between the Pages when Patrick was working just to see him. I always remember the crazy local music in the background and the somewhat obscene churning of those brown and orange granita vats with Pat in silhouette in front of them. I will miss you, dearest Patrick. You are way too large a personality for anecdotes, so I am sorry for trying to make sentences of you when you really deserve epics or at least a Rocky Horror-style opera. My mom still has that photo of the two of us--you looking dangerously hot in your green dress and come-hither sucked-in cheeks. Love, Randee Bouressa

I remember that Pat used to make homemade paper out of just about any possible fiber he could find. He was very creative with the things he used and would experiment with just about any combination of fibers and ingredients. For my birthday sophomore year, he made me a homemade card out of his paper. Imbedded in the paper, he had used flower petals to write my initials, "KD". It is still among the most thoughtful and unique gifts I have received.

Pat used to think up all kinds of funny, yet harmless schemes. Once, Pat, Meredith, and I were having lunch at the Casbah Café, the greasiest restaurant in downtown Appleton. I was a vegetarian when I was in high school, and the Casbah Café made one vegetarian dish. It consisted of a pile of greasy vegetables—broccoli, bean sprouts, mushrooms (not a vegetable, but whatever), carrots--topped with cheese. As we were having lunch, we noticed the flower arrangement on our table looked peculiar. By most standards, the flowers wouldn't necessarily constitute an arrangement, per se, but by Casbah Café standards maybe it was appropriate. The arrangement consisted of a few stems of plants that are traditionally considered fillers in real bouquets, like babies breathe and stasis. We also noticed the vase was lacking water. This prompted a discussion about how often they water and maintain the arrangements. Pat thought it would be funny to put a piece of broccoli from my veggie pile in with the arrangement on our table to see how long it would stay there before someone removed it. Pat stealthily placed a piece of my broccoli into the vase. Amusingly, the broccoli was kind of the centerpiece of the arrangement. We, of course, thought this was hilarious; we even took a picture (that I still have). I can't remember how long it was before we returned to the Casbah to check on our broccoli—at least a month. It was still there, shriveled and grayish! Kari Debbink (High School Friend)

I met Patrick in high school at Appleton East. I can't think of one particular story that I would like to tell, however in all the years I knew him the memories I have leave only bright points about him. It really didn't matter what you were doing he always seemed to have a smile on his face and knew how to put one on yours. He always was enthusiastic, and could turn tedium into fun. I remember long sessions playing diplomacy, I remember late nights playing games at Peter's dad's office. I remember cruising the Ave with Tori Amos or the Indigo Girls blasting because he was that kind of person. I still have many gifts he made me because he was that kind of person. I remember him sober cabbing me around on my 21st birthday because he was that kind of person. And even my sister said that she could still hear his laugh. I might not have done a very good job of keeping in touch the last few years but he would come to my thought's often and make me smile. I guess I don't know how to end something like this, so I guess I'll step out of my box like he probably would have done and use a quote where I normally wouldn't from a man I normally would quote, Abe Lincoln, "In the end it's not the years in you life that matter,but the life in your years." From that I can't think of anyone I know that has led a more full one. I'll miss you Patrick. Matt Dees

I can’t really imagine a world without Patrick. He has been in my world since, I think, first grade, when he had Mrs. O’Cock and I had Mrs. Clark. We didn’t become friends then, or in second grade when he had Mrs. Wisneski and I had Mrs. Wittwer. It was third grade, when I had Mrs. Barber but she and Mrs. Burglund team taught, that he and I became friends. That was the year the boys and girls started hanging out together, and it was the year they started GT. I had always had a different definition of cool than, for instance, my family full of sisters. I thought cool was comic books and he-man, matchbox cars and science fiction stories. GT brought me in contact with Pat, Peter Lesperance, and Christoph, and with them, a brand new definition of cool. I always felt like I was faking it in GT- I didn’t have any real talent but somehow all these smart kids believed in me, and so I got to play along with them. It was me and Stephanie and a room full of boys who thought we were smart. Altogether, with Andy Barkmeier and the Tatlock twins, we sort of grew into this group of kids who were cocky and over-confident, but smart enough to know we were cocky and over-confident. We would complain about how our teachers didn’t challenge us. “Copying a story from the board isn’t creative enough! We need to be creative!!!” we whined to Paula Sween, who would nod in sympathy and tell us how hard it was for teachers to understand gifted kids. I think somewhere in the middle of 3rd grade our friendships actually made it out to the playground at recess, where we would play four square and swing and- oh god! Veggie! It came later, probably in 5th grade, but Veggie was a giant game of tag we played on the woodchip playground at Edison. It had all sorts of rules that we would recite ritualistically: no tag-backs, no chase tagging, no going off the woodchips. The sheer number of people made it fun- no one was “it” for very long. In sixth grade we went to Columbus for APEX, where we met Shannon French and Maggie Shultz. We’d ride the short bus every Friday, which we loved because we’d distract the driver while Christoph or Pat or Peter put something from their lunches under the wheels of the bus. On our return back to Edison we’d check out our little flattening experiment- applesauce on the curb, or an orange splattered on the road. In elementary school I remember thinking that Pat was equal parts incredibly smart and an extremely good bullshitter. He and that group of boys convinced Erica Klapperich that the song “Barbie and the Rockers” was originally the German anthem “Hitler and the Nazis.” He was never mean spirited or cruel, just a person who loved a good joke and wasn’t afraid to look silly by making it. Laced through all his incredible intelligence and his impressive vocabulary was this really endearing lightness- as if he didn’t take things very seriously. When we got to Columbus our first day of Apex Patrick came up with the idea of going out to the playground at recess and talking loudly about the experimental brain surgeries we were performing, hoping that the Columbus kids on the playground would believe us. He came up with all these pretend medical terms that sounded completely true. It was amazing. Around that time, we came up with metaphors to describe each other’s brains. Peter’s was a bucket with a small hole in the bottom: he was always learning more but then forgetting the easy stuff he’d already learned. Stephanie’s was a vault and she couldn’t find the key. Mindy’s was silly putty, bouncing around and picking up random tidbits. Mine was a sponge, gathering knowledge all the time but having inexplicable times when I couldn’t think of anything- those were times the sponge was being squeezed. Patrick’s was a meat grinder: information went in one way, and came out completely different. Same information, but a different shape, agenda, or perspective. Laney McKee French

Patrick and I first became friends the summer of ’91, between our 7th and 8th grades. For a two week period that summer, Rick Flom, my best friend at the time, was away on vacation with his family. Somehow, Patrick and I got together, and hung out almost every day during that time. Our daily routine involved playing games of ratfuck with his older brother, Josh, and Josh’s then-girlfriend, Michelle. We would be seated on the floor of Josh’s room while listening to the Violent Femmes and various other college rock. We would walk around Edison, Peabody Park, and downtown Appleton, musing on various topics while doing odd things like buying China flats, perusing rummage sales, and the like. Our two weeks as ad hoc best friends culminated with a bizarre cosmic event. It was a day like any other day, Josh, Michelle, Patrick and I playing cards and hanging at the Saunders residence. Then we discovered that there was a partial solar eclipse, and decided to walk together to Edison to witness it. I remember it casting a somewhat eerie mood over the social air, as though the eclipse were the metaphor for fate and circumstance bringing us together for that brief time. Though for the rest of that summer, and for the duration of high school and college years Patrick and I went our separate ways, we had reached a strange sort of understanding with each other, and we remained friends in our adult years. Adulthood brings an interesting complexity to personas, and to relationships. I always thought of Patrick as a sort of reluctant optimist. He had a dark, cynical side, and also dealt with many issues in his life, but always seemed to have a cheery demeanor in a social setting. I can perfectly recall that high-pitched, explosive, smokey laugh of his that peppered every conversation. It was infectious. I saw Patrick periodically during our college years, and I remember running into him quite a bit when he worked at the coffee shop in Conkee’s bookstore. When Laney and I started dating again, Patrick re-entered my life as a friend, and we would get together whenever we were in the same town. Most of the time, that meant Appleton, although Patrick visited us in Milwaukee a few times. It was during one of those visits that Patrick and I agreed we would start a firm specializing in treehouse architecture. We would call it French & Saunders, the name being an homage to the early 20th century British comedy duo of the same name. He was a great companion for musing and constructing elaborate fantasies with. I distinctly remember his presence at my bachelor party. I believe it was he and Christoph who allowed my drunken arms to be propped upon their shoulders during my ‘walk’ back to the Mckee HQ for some after-bar silliness on ice; their graceful, if whimsical. At first, I thought he might prefer to attend Laney’s bachelorette party, taking place at the same time elsewhere on the Ave., but I think he had fun at my debauched gathering. I remember glancing over at one point and seeing him with Ty Liebig, also in attendance, chatting away, and I thought again about the odd phenomenon of how circumstances can bring people together and then just as quickly, take them away from each other, like the fleeting event of celestial bodies in alignment. Patrick, though he left us all, has in memory and association become an intrinsic part of us. I can’t help but feel that my own brand of optimism has become a bit more sardonic and reluctant with Patrick’s passing, but that my cynicism became more humorous and bearable through my interactions with him. In the fabric of my mind, these times and sentiments that I shared with Patrick will forever remain precious. Shannon David French

This is Jennifer Hawkins and I went to school with Patrick at East. I really enjoyed getting to know Patrick, theater was a great way to spend time together. He welcomed everyone with open arms, I was always comfortable to be myself around him and finally felt excepted, it was a great crowd we were in, everyone was different and funny and Patrick definitely stood out as a leader. I'll always remember driving around with Patrick and another dear friend Jenny Jungwirth, listening to music and being crazy, we would scream along to the song "Disco Fleshpot" by My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult. It's silly and trivial and know will remember it but it makes me laugh and smile, because it was someone like Patrick that you always wanted around. He was a support system when times were bad and someone you wanted to share your accomplishments with. I'm glad to have had my moments with him and deeply saddened that he wont be around when I come back to visit. I wish everyone well, and may we all enjoy the memory of his laughter and smiles. Jennifer Hawkins

I met Patrick at Macalester -- he was easily the coolest guy on our dorm floor, and for a while lived just down the hall from me. He had a 10-pound weight in his room and used to amaze us by lifting it off the ground with his spectacularly dextrous toes. Two years later, I was sharing a house with him and a couple of other people, as poor, starving college students generally do. He did bizarre things like putting cinnamon on his yellow squash when he sauteed it. He introduced me to the joys of bad sci-fi movies. All five of us in the house networked our computers and played Quake, and Patrick, of course, pulled no punches at beating us soundly. His room was right next to mine and I remember commenting loudly and abusively on this lack of tact. And because roommate situations are always a bit rocky, he and I would sometimes take off in his car, just the two of us, and we would cruise the twin cities at night in the dead of winter, windows rolled down and the heat blasting at our feet. In those moments, he made me feel so loved. One of my greatest stories comes from the time that he took me home with him to Appleton for Spring Break. We drove his quirky old Subaru with electro-pneumatic suspension that would inflate and then deflate when he started and stopped the car. At one point, as we were backing out of a driveway, we heard a clunking noise and our investigation revealed that one of the rear disc brake pads had fallen off the car. As we were picking the car up from the mechanics who had re-affixed the pad, he said (I'll never forget this): "Yeah, I think it may have fallen off again, but I'm not sure." I have no idea why we just accepted this. The day we drove home was the first really warm day of the spring. It was in the 70s, so I was rolling up the legs of my pants and lamenting the fact that I'd chosen to wear a black t-shirt. The car was taking it much worse, however. The extra air compressor for the suspension meant that the car overheated very easily. A drive that should have taken us four and a half hours instead took us ten. The car began to overheat every half an hour, so we would pull of and stop for food and take a forty-five minute break and wait for the car to calm down. As we limped back into the twin cities, we were driving on the shoulder of the freeway because the car couldn't break 45 mph without instantly overheating. I was scouring the map for a less stressful route and found what seemed to be the perfect option: a smaller country rode that ran parallel to the freeway all the way into the cities. As soon as we took the exit we realized our mistake. We were sliding down what I swear must have been a 25 degree hill (that's much scarier than it sounds), and here's the conundrum: if we continued downhill, we weren't sure if we had brakes or not; if we turned around and headed back uphill, we weren't sure if they car could make it without exploding. The story is fairly anti-climactic. We crossed our fingers and said a prayer and eased our way down the hill. When we got to the bottom we found ourselves in the middle of a spattering of houses, but, somewhat unsettlingly, saw not one single person. After picking our stomachs back off the floor of the car, taking a walk, and thanking our lucky stars, we continued down the road and somehow found our way home. After I left Macalester, we stayed in touch, talking every few months. I saw him once in Minnesota when I was there for a family reunion, and he visited me once in Brooklyn while he was staying with his brother. He was one of my best friends, because, despite the distance and the time between phone calls, we stayed fairly close -- he would call me out of the blue and we would have a wonderfully welcome conversation that would remind me, every time, of just how much I missed him. So this is what comes to mind now when I think of Patrick. That, and the sound of his delightfully sarcastic drawl on the phone. I planned on knowing him forever, and now I'm going to miss him forever. Lauren Hesse

I have always heard people talk about high school being their "glory days" – a time when they made their best friends and felt totally accepted. For me, that time came earlier in life at Edison Elementary School. I’m not sure if it was because Edison was located near the heart of the Lawrence University campus and its creative and musical families or if it was just because God was looking out for me and sending me to a place where I would learn to be open-minded, creative, and most importantly, friends with everyone. Either way, my six years at Edison helped shape me into the person I am today.

Similar to any school, we had a variety of students at Edison. There were the jocks, who ran off to tournaments and practices on the weekends. There were the musical people who had violin or piano lessons after school. There were the skater boys who could be seen riding their skateboards in jams and t-shirts all over the neighborhood. The difference at Edison was that we were all friends with each other. The word "clique" did not seem to exist inside our pale blue walls. We all co-existed with each other happily and learned to not only accept our differences, but to appreciate them.

Patrick was part of so many of these memories of Edison. One of my favorite memories was in 6th grade when we performed the musical Oliver. We worked hard making sets, learning the music, and rehearsing the blocking. Granted, my memory probably exaggerates how good we were, but in my mind, we were amazing. I remember Patrick’s beautiful solo of "Boy For Sale." Even at 11 or 12, he had an amazing musical talent. Every time I hear that music, I think of Patrick and how proud we were of our show. I went to school with Patrick until graduation. We continued to cross paths in classes; however after high school, we lost touch. Recently though, I had a wonderful surprise waiting for me in my e-mail inbox – a message from Patrick. He had found me on a networking site and sent a message to say hello. I now live in Nashville, so we swapped a couple messages about our favorite places to eat and visit. I was again amazed at how even seemingly lost friendships can be rekindled and I was touched that he reached out to me. I am so thankful to have had this last communication with him. I am honored that I had the opportunity to know Patrick. I am filled with sadness when I think about his short life, but am comforted by the memories of Oliver, Four Square, Battle Ball, and the blue walls of Edison Elementary School. Lindsey Teetaert Jacobs

I remember the day Steve and Patrick came to my house to give me a very, very trashy makeover -- it must have been seventh or eighth grade, and though i don't recall the impetus for this ill-fated project, i do remember spending a few hours with the two of you in the upstairs bathroom of my parents house while you worked your, uh, "magic" on 13-year old me. i remember a lot of aqua net, a lot of makeup, a ridiculous outfit, and the stunned/ appalled look on patrick's mother's face when she came to our front door to take him safely home to sanity and dinner, and saw the fruit of his labor coming down the stairs (and [these] guys were SO proud of [them]selves). i was also remembering a day one summer when i took a trip to the milwaukee zoo with pat, his mom, and peter. we stopped at the downtown milwaukee mall and tooled about, just the three of us away from the grownups, feeling very cosmopolitan and cracking one another up in the old banana republic store, back when banana republic was kind of a novelty and actually had things like pith helmets -- great fodder for pat and pete, needless to say. i remember his beagle, and stepping in a puddle of the dog's pee in their kitchen in my sock feet, and becoming myself, in that moment, great fodder for patrick and peter, et al. i dug up a photo of the two of us at great america on the eighth grade end-of-year trip, smiling broadly in line for some ride or another, patrick wearing his russian toothpaste t-shirt. i remember patrick turning me on to michelle shocked, a musician i stumbled on and whom he was well versed in. and i remember unloading my last surviving bunny rabbit on pat when i went away to college, much to his mothers chagrin, but there was patrick, big-hearted and happy to adopt a little living creature as his own, so there went the bunny, installed for better or worse into his backyard.

these are tiny moments of a life of course, and i can think of tons of others, minature snapshots from shared time. they're nothing. they're everything. they were our childhood, our growing up, our shared, safe lives. but mostly when i think of him, i'm amazed at how clearly i can still hear his voice, as though he were standing here in brooklyn in my kitchen with me right now, and when i see him in my mind, i always see him in either exuberant excited storytelling, or in slightly wry glib humor, but always, somehow always, just on the edge of laughter, ready to crack himself or all the rest of us up.

that photograph of him and me is on my refrigerator now, reminding me of the friend we've lost and the life we shared together on the edge of so much change. i was saying to someone that it is hard to explain -- maybe to justify -- the feeling of loss for a person who has not been in my life for so long. but it was pointed out to me -- and i think its right -- that when it comes to certain people, certain kinds of friendship, that even when people slip beyond our grasp in the day to day, even the year to year, we always imagine they are still there, out there, moving forward, having their lives, becoming more and more, and we always imagine that there will be moments when we find one another again, check in, get to know more of what's become and see again what we've always known -- simply, that there will be more, just more -- and there is comfort in this, contentment, peace. that patrick is no longer in this life with us is... what can you say? dizzying, impossible, and just so senseless, just so sad. Stephanie Janssen

One story in particular sticks in my mind, probably because Patrick and I were talking about when he came to visit us just a week before he died. In 5th grade, we embarked on an ambitious project to author a compilation of short stories entitled "Mental Bucket." We set up a "work day" and furiously wrote a set of very absurd stories (I believe Stephanie Jansen also joined us to contribute a story). Of course, being the procrastinators that Patrick and I both were, we didn't really do anything with our stories. About a year later, we decided to write the capstone to our project: My German Village. It consisted of lots of the types of absurdist humor tidbits that Patrick specialized in, like: -In my German village, the roads are paved in dirt. Dirt and bodies. There were a few dozen of them, and we laughed hysterically with every one we wrote. We showed it to other people, but no one thought it was even remotely funny besides the two of us. We, of course, still failed to publish a copy of Mental Bucket. Later in high school, we revisited the project. We solicited more stories from a wider group of friends, we compiled them... and we still failed to publish it. Once again, we also laughed hysterically at My German Village, while no one else did. We revisited the project again when we were both in college, and this time we finally published a single copy of Mental Bucket, which, to this day, I have no idea where it went. We also created a web site (www.mentalbucket.com) which, to this day, is pretty much empty. Just a week before Patrick passed away, he came over to my house. Just before he left, we were discussing the revival of the Mental Bucket project, reciting My German Village verses to each other, and laughing hysterically. Peter Lesperance

I don't have one memorable anecdote to report, just a memory of a good and fine presence on my back doorstep. I can still see him... feel him... as a grade schooler standing there with that expectant, open look on his face. He had, as you well know, a wry and impish humor, and, oh, how creative he was. After we had once laughed about a dinosaur Meredith had created, he appeared several years later with an almost exact replica, male version, that he had somehow sculpted and fired, right down to the same glaze and toothpick-poked facial expression. I treasure those two dinosaurs, and they often give me a chuckle from their perch on my kitchen bookshelf. I (very briefly) considered bringing them to the gathering for Patrick, and then, of course, reconsidered. With great empathy and compassion, Margaret Mason (Meredith Mason was a classmate of Patrick’s)

731-9089 is the phone number I called almost every day as a kid to ask "Is Patrick there?" And then, "Can you play?" from the time I was five years old till Patrick and I had a conversation making fun of how we always asked each other "Can you play?" around 11 or 12 years old when it seemed like we were too old to ask each other a question like that. He made me laugh harder and more than any friend I've ever had in my life. Mostly if we played inside, we would go into his bedroom and play with legos and write comic books or work hard on this underground gossip magazine we were working on to be of general interest to other Edison students. For the title, he said, "What about misc?" I didn't know what misc was and he told me it was the abbreviation for miscellaneous. I didn't know what that was either and I told him so. He explained and I thought - what a great title, so I started drawing the title and the type of font we would write it in and I wrote down M.I.S.K. then he explained that it wasn't an acronym, but an abbreviation and that it was actually with a c not a k, but we both agreed the k was much cooler and so Misk was the title of our magazine we never finished because we fell constantly into silent painful hard laughing at how funny our ideas were and every time Patrick would draw out the illustrations, we just cracked up. Patrick's vocabulary was incredible for a kid his age and I'm sure he knew that, and while he was not shy about using words, he always taught me so many things in a way that was just like free knowledge. He was so generous and overly modest about how intelligent he was and that never changed. He gave me confidence to believe I was in the same what I saw as an out-of-my-league intelligent and academic culture I never would have thought I could even keep up with without faking-it-till-I-make-it so to speak. Patrick had value for knowledge and intelligence, but he had no value for exclusivity and elitism. I liked him because he was so much fun to play with, but he made my world so much larger than it ever would have been without him being my best friend. He taught me the basics of everything I know today about words, drawing, music, how to understand and appreciate episodes of Star Trek, computers and how to play and beat video games. What Patrick and I had in common was not something people could see - it was in our imaginations that the world could be how we wanted to make it - and we wanted it funny and really interesting. I wish I could say that life can only get better. But I can't even imagine anything more exciting than the playtime I had with my best friend in the 80s at 10-11 years old.-----Oh, and when this giant kid crapped in Patrick’s upstairs bathroom and it took several means to get it out including an electric auger, Patrick was so irritated and said "Jesus Fucking Christ, we just should ship him to Russia and have him take a dump in their toilets to ruin their infrastructure." Stephen Olsen

Six words describe the fondest activities I shared with Patrick: Hodge Podge; John Harmon; Cajun Crock. Most of our time was spent solidifying and preserving disintegrating biological materials; choreographing absolutely the worst choral music ever written; creating culinary masterpieces that rival even chicken-flavored noodle soup. Pat is Action, Genuine, Exclamation Point, Intuition. Melissa Reilly

Patrick's house was on my way to Edison School- I would walk with the girls from Bellaire Court, pick up Amanda Anderson, and see Steve Olson across the street on the way, we would eventually walk by Bree's and Tara's house too. We were a tight group of kids, and ended up racing each other home from school, pushing each other into snowbanks, and generally being kid-like. In high school Patrick, Sara Tibbetts and some other kids and I started an art club together, which allowed us to keep the art-room open during off times. Patrick was enthusiastic, funny, and irreverent with big plans for our club. I remember dragging around a toilet with him from front-yard to front-yard, and sitting under the art-room tables with Sara playing around. His memory spans my childhood years, and I'm glad for that. Meg Rotzel

At the last meal I had with Patrick, he was in charge of the dessert. In his unique culinary genius, he made a pear and hazelnut tarte with chocolate dizzled over the top. Of course, it was a recipe he had invented hours earlier. It was great...except for the fact that the pears were not ripe, the hazelnuts were burnt in an attempt to roast them, and the chocolate drizzle was chunky because it comprised of chocolate chips that he had melted in the microwave. It was so terrible that neither me, my husband, Patrick, or our other guest could finish it. I can't eat pears without thinking of that night and smiling. Anne Rubin

Patrick Saunders and I have known each other since junior high. We became friends during our senior year in high school and were joined at the hip for a few months when he returned back to Appleton after finishing his undergraduate studies. We remained close friends during the various phases of our lives, so I should have a heaping slew of anecdotes to share, except I am recently obsessed with just one: My voicemail from Patrick Saunders. See, Patrick left me a voicemail message on my phone a little over a month ago. And, I may never forgive myself for deleting it because of it would have been a wonderful archive of his vocal animation. Anyway, what he basically said was, “Hey…I’m coming to Appleton…so call me….Bye.” But, what Patrick really said was, “Que pasa, Tran! Vvoy a Applaaytone este fin de semana y necessitas llamarrrme prahnto! Aah, nosotros vaaamos a decir sobre las cosas vary-osas… y, uh, tomar muchas cervesas! Puuuessss: Vaymos a tener mucho divertido. Ok …HAYSSS - FRY-O! ...Ciao.” For those who don’t speak Spanish, don’t get out your Spanish-English dictionary, as my spelling will fail you on purpose and because that last word was in Italian. Either way, the content of his voicemail isn’t so much important as his delivery. Patrick liked parody…and he knew what annoyed me: The American who spoke Spanish without any regard whatsoever to the importance of pronouncing the vocabulary accurately and consistently – the one who had an ethnocentric laziness for verbalization, but who decided nonetheless that he wanted to communicate in a language that was foreign to him. But, there’s a hybrid imitation going on with Patrick’s voicemail here, so it doesn’t stop there. I noticed the second layer to his drama when he delivered this sentence with a deep and serious breathiness: “Aah, nosotros vaaamos a decir sobre las cosas vary-osas…” …That would have been my mom. Patrick just made fun of my mom in that sentence. Okay, so maybe Patrick frequently talked to me in my mother’s voice as a way to settle me down when I was hyperactive and out of control, but still. This nuance was totally contrived out of disrespect for our elderly. My mom may have given Patrick a bad haircut once, but it doesn’t warrant his condescending behavior. There was another layer to this masquerade, but I struggle with this one:

"HAYSSS - FRY-O!!!"

Who was that? …With the overt lisp and engineered flamboyancy of it all, I think it was just Patrick making fun of….people who hate the cold. Look, this voicemail reminds me of Patrick’s capacity to insert subtle intricacies beneath his over-zealous humor. And, he did this just as well as he could extract humorous complexity from the simplest of things. Patrick could make a big deal out of nothing and turn around to show you why it’s not really a big deal. He made his friends laugh, and this is just one of the many things I admired about him. Patrick was a loyal friend to me and, best of all, he made me laugh. Tara Stevenson

I was a good friend of his at Macalester, although we hadn't been in contact much in recent years. I had been thinking of him lately and wondering how he was doing-- I only wish I had acted on that and gotten in touch. What I will always remember about Patrick is his willingness to go anywhere for adventure. To him, his car meant freedom, no matter what condition it was in. In college, we used to drive 10 miles to the Uptown neighborhood in Minneapolis just to study at a coffee shop. There came a point where his Subaru could no longer be trusted on the freeway, but we still made the trip-- driving on local streets the whole way. Patrick viewed this inconvenience as merely an opportunity to do and see more-- stopping for ice cream on the way and then passing through some of Minneapolis' colorful neighborhoods. Patrick also routinely drove (with various friends and room mates in the car, of course) to the Norske Nook in Osseo, WI, to buy their delicious pies. His reasoning was that it was perfectly justifiable because the drive was less than 100 miles (it was 99). No matter the destination, driving with Patrick was a unique pleasure. He had a vast collection of cassette tapes full of obscure music. Prince featured prominently. If he got sick of a particular tape, he would just hit eject and toss it over his shoulder into the back seat to mix in the others in the pile. Then he'd pull out another and pop it in, then stab his finger emphatically at the stereo, saying that THIS one was really amazing, you just have to listen to this! Kirstin Thompson

I didn't meet Patrick until I was a senior in high school, but he was a central figure of that year. We worked together doing layout for the North newspaper, built a float for the homecoming parade, went to prom (and camping) together, and drank a lot of coffee. He wanted to shorten my name, but I was resistant his choice, "Abs," so we compromised and he called me "Legs." Even as recently as last year, long after I'd forgotten my own nickname, when I called he excitedly said "Legs! How are you?" Some time after he withdrew from Grinell, Patrick came to visit me in Madison. He had committed to DJ-ing a party there, and wasn't looking forward to going back for the event. Patrick decided it would be more fun and less awkward if I went along with him, so somehow I found myself skipping class, riding shotgun to Iowa for a long and ridiculous weekend. Patrick was very supportive of and excited about my career transition from theatre to science. The last time we talked, I was finishing applications to graduate programs and he was leaving Ann Arbor. I wish I could have shared with him my adventures moving and starting a full-time program, and heard about his move to Madison. My mother, when we talked about our memories, said she remembers him sitting at the dinette table in our house and just laughing and laughing. That's how I like to remember Patrick: laughing. Abigail J. Trarbach

Patrick and I were both chubby when we were young, and probably stood in some physical contrast to our more vertical and gaunt friends at Edison. My mother tried to assure me that "husky" clothing might be a brand. I think we were cherubic little butterballs. I hit my growth spurt in the beginning of junior high and was momentarily interested in distance running. Towards the end of eighth grade I heard the news that Patrick was coming back from his year in Florence and that the Saunders were getting a divorce. I was nervous about how to begin the conversation with him when he returned. My own parents had separated, but I was far younger and probably needed to know less when it happened. And I had not kept in regular contact with Patrick. I was embarrassed for the lack of contact on my part and wondered if he would want to be my friend. One afternoon at track practice Patrick walked towards me, thinner and taller than I had ever imagined him. And with scraggly hair that just about reached his collar. I soon grew mine out as well. He began the conversation with a smile and we picked up our friendship immediately. I think he gave me a book on the cultivation of zucchini. In Italian, of course. Patrick had an ability -a need- to keep moving. To look for the next thing. This annoyed me at times, but I envied him his perpetual search. I was more sedate and he would pull me to many things I might not have otherwise enjoyed. I had more energy when I was around him. Tangents to conversation were commonplace and he did not shy away from the profound, esoteric, or difficult to discuss and neither also from the delightfully absurd. The memory of a completely juvenile evening during college when we made rum balls never fails to amuse me. Patrick was always the stronger friend, and the one that kept the contact going. I might not have gotten him to sit still very often, but I was always grateful when he showed up at my door. Christoph Wahl

I met Patrick in high school, or maybe before that through Stephen Olsen. I can't honestly remember how we met, because, through the distance of history, his presence in my life seems like an inevitability. The memories I cherish the most from my adolescence, the ones when I was doing something ridiculous and creative and thrilling, almost all involve Patrick. We used Floam to build a scale model of our Lawrence Trivia team namesake, the Hebephrenic Leper Boat, and hand-delivered it to the trivia office at 3am. We decorated old toilets and gifted them to our friends' (parents') yards. Our piece de resistance was the Ode on a Porcelain Urn: Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty. We got lost together in the Hradcany district of Prague and almost missed the choir bus out of town. He visited me in Houston after I went to college, and we sat together for hours in a tree. He took me to the only party I've ever had to leave by scaling a fence and running from the cops. He made invasive -- and deadly accurate -- guesses about how far I'd gone with my high school sweetheart. Really, he was the first friend with whom I talked frankly about sex, because he rode the line between crude and thoughtful so easily. He mocked me (rightly) when I regaled him with escapades of all the boys who were wrong for me, and congratulated me (again, rightly) after he met the one he and I both knew I would marry. His instincts were unerring every time. And he was the unsung hero at our wedding. Lacking a proper wedding coordinator, I put Patrick in charge of, well, basically everything. He managed all the checklists. He ran interference to make sure no one bothered me or Todd with dumb questions. He moved the chairs for the ceremony three times: once to set up outside, once to take it all down and move inside when it rained and rained, and finally outside again 10 minutes before the processional, when the sun burst through the clouds just in time. I saved so many of his letters and notes and doodles, but not enough, never enough, to capture what he meant to me. Patrick brought wit and art and joyful, unabashed laughter to my life. He never met my kids, and I wish they could have heard his laugh. I wish I had had the chance to tell them: "Listen. This is what a laugh should sound like. When you laugh, make sure you do it like this. Do it with your whole body, and do it often with the people you love." Christy Adessa Wilkens