Skip to main content

A Tremendous Loss

Me playing with Thomas in one of his last shows.
Today I awoke to unimaginable news.  Thomas George, one of my fellow ComedySportz players and friends, died in his sleep last night.  Thomas was just a little bit younger than me.  I played in his last ComedySportz show on Friday night.  We were supposed to play together last night as well.  He never showed up at the theater. 

 I am shocked and sad. 

 Although I have mentioned ComedySportz (CSZ) a few times on my blog, I have never really talked about the impact it has had on my life in just one short year.  Roger and I stumbled upon CSZ through a Richmond Mom fundraiser.  We were invited by Kate Hall to participate as "guest performers" in November 2011.  We had such a good time with the two-day event, we decided to audition for the major league troupe last January.  

 I had no idea that we would make it into the troupe.  We really went to the auditions on a lark.  For those of you still out of the loop, ComedySportz is competitive, short-form improvisational comedy.  Our shows resemble the TV show Whose Line is it Anyway with Drew Carey & Co.  While the shows are fun, the lessons learned through improvisation give you so much more.  You have to think on your feet, support your fellow teammates, get out of your head, and open up the creative core of your brain.  It's hard work and I love it!

 Through CSZ, I have found a new hobby but I also found a new family. The members of the troupe come from all types of backgrounds. We have bankers, actors, teachers, musicians, computer geeks, medical technicians, and people who work in sales as members of our tightly knit community.  We support one another in every endeavor.  The CSZ folks have become super-duper cheerleaders of CJ's Thumbs Up Foundation and the support that I get at shows or weekly rehearsals has gotten me through some stressful and difficult weeks this past year. 

 I met Thomas about three months after joining CSZ. He had recently returned as an active player after being on "hiatus".  We didn't automatically hit it off.  He was brash and self-assured. I don't think he could have a conversation without cursing.  This honestly didn't bother me but we did have a mini-smackdown one evening after he casually dropped the R-word in the middle of a feedback session after a show.  There are just a few places where I draw the line. 

 Even that slight mishap didn't keep us from becoming friends.  Thomas always approached things, both at CSZ and in life, with honesty and positivity.  I learned so much from him as a teacher and I always enjoyed playing with him on the stage. He was also frequently amused by the fact that I got many of his random pop culture references. 

Thomas George, you were a great human being.  I am so glad CSZ gave me the opportunity to know you.  You will be missed.  


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9.  Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole.  There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them."    I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known.  This
Post a Comment
Read more

The Stages of Grief: COVID Edition

It's 2020. It's almost Christmas. We're still in the middle of a pandemic. In fact, we are experiencing what appears to be an incredible surge that is exerting tremendous pressure on our healthcare and social service system. The headlines are clear: we're not done with this madness and December 31, 2020 will not magically be the "end of it".  Earlier in the year, our family thought about whether we might be able to travel at this time. We thought that maybe the curve would be flat enough that we could take a few days away from home during the Christmas holidays. We realized that the pandemic would still be happening, but with the right protections and with prolific mask usage, we could get a much-needed change of scenery. During what is now (clearly) a delusional thought process, we booked a stay in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for the week of December 19th. Spoiler alert: we canceled the trip almost two weeks ago.  Canceling this trip was not a tragedy. In fact, I
1 comment
Read more

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen.  If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life.  I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into
2 comments
Read more