audrey campbell writes

(Andree here) Amy Collen - a major force in the team that brought the multimedia presentation to the Rising - received a note from Audrey Campbell. Audrey's known most of us through the last over-a-decade, through gallery openings and art car drive ins and cartooning jams and animation festivals.

Imagine what angelic patience THAT takes.

Speaking of angelic, she and her husband Scot "Extremo" Campbell came to the Rising, and these words are her gift to Erik.

NAMASTE
Namaste: "The light in me honours the light in you" in Sanskrit. Traditionally said as a greeting.
A friend of Scot’s passed away 6 weeks ago. I didn’t know him well. We met Erik through a friend at Scot’s first art show at the Basil Hallward Gallery in 2003. He really wanted to buy a painting called “Kathy Kitty Goes to Ice Cream City” but it had already been sold, so he commissioned a painting from Scot for his daughter Lyric.
We got to know Erik and his beautiful wife Nancy over the past few years, Scot more than I. We usually met up at a mutual friend’s birthday party, once a year. Erik was a very large Viking of a man with a booming voice and a boisterous manner. He was intelligent, quick witted and no doubt ADHD. Wherever he was, he was the event.

In March of this year he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer and passed away six weeks ago, he was 42. Saturday was his memorial. Erik was a very interesting and quirky person. During the memorial I could not tell apart his actual siblings from his friends. I had met Hans, his younger brother, and Andre, his sister, before but everyone who spoke seemed to be a brother of his. As it turned out this was the way Erik did life.
I learned many things about Erik on Saturday that I didn’t know before:
There were two kinds of people in Erik’s world, friends and strangers.
He fed and nurtured all his relationships.
You were never an acquaintance, you were a part of his life. If you came to visit and he was building a chicken coop, you were building it too.
He was the kid in high school that wore the yellow pants and thought they were cool.
He pushed people to be better and inspired them to be.
The things I did know about Erik were:
He loved to laugh and tell stories about anything and nothing and he had a story for everything.
He had an energy and life force that few could ignore or would want to.
Problems were insignificant, annoyances if even elevated to that level.
In his presence one felt safe.
Of course there were many stories told that day, lots of laughs and many more tears.
I have recently been going through a passage of growth and understanding, a milestone of life, realizing more clearly that all the frustrations in my life come from inside me and not from the people I assign my frustrations to! All the craziness in my life is from me? What? I am now realizing that, well, yes, it is.
I recently read a quote: “What’s best for me is already on it’s way.” I take that to mean that the Universe provides. Erik’s memorial brought me once again the understanding that I have got to live each day in joy and to take the time to enjoy the world and experience my life. Our time here together is too short and the people in my life are far more important than the lawn I am not cutting or the bill I am not paying. My life’s lessons are important too. I have recently seen very clearly that if I don’t learn my lesson in one place, it is not going to go away just because I go to another room. Wherever I go, there I am, and there is that damn lesson. Until I learn it, it will pop up over and over again. And it doesn’t have anything to do with anybody else… only me.
In the few days since Erik’s memorial I have walked in a sense of thankfulness and joy for all of my family, my closest friends and the people that I love. These are coincidentally the same people who love, cherish and fill me. I know the “overwhelmingness” of this feeling will fade in a few weeks or days but I really want to let you know that I count you as one of the special people in my life, “my family” and I want you to know that you are important to me. Even though I may not always say it or show it I love and cherish your life and friendship. Without you I would have missed the many experiences we have shared and my life would have been missing the richness you have brought me.
Namaste
"The light in me honors the light in you"

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Audrey, our thanks for the light in you. -- Andree