I found this funny picture of Lara in the tent when we were in Tibet and it made me smile. Thanks everyone for all of the pictures and stories here.
Here is my eulogy from the service on Saturday:
Lara lived with a sense of urgency. She would often call me up just to tell me how restless she was, how eager she was to get on to the next adventure. And she always gave me a hard time if she thought I was dragging my feet about doing something. She’d beat me up about it--she would say, “look: you had better get going—we are not getting any younger!”
That urgency was always there and it propelled her to go all around the world climbing, skiing, surfing, learning new things, visiting new countries, meeting people and making friends. And, she made a lot of friends. When you look around the room and see the crowd here it’s easy to see how many lives Lara touched. And, it wasn’t her swashbuckling that made her all of these friends, it was her warmth. Lara was a badass and she was tough and brash, but she was also the first person I would turn to if something was wrong and I needed someone to talk to.
Looking at the blog for Lara, there are so many pictures there, mostly of Lara climbing and skiing and having adventures. And, when Courtney and I were looking through our photos there were more of the same—pictures of Lara on mountaintops, Lara skiing, Lara in Tibet. But, most of my memories of Lara aren’t quite as photogenic: walking the dogs in West Seattle, talking on the phone or just so many evenings hanging out, drinking wine with Robert and Lara and Chad at the end of the day. Chad and I were laughing yesterday about the absurd number of times in a row that we ate the exact same meal of grilled chicken and salad.
I talked to Lara on the phone a day or two before she left for Alaska. We talked about her trip, about Chad’s climb in China, the regular topics at hand. Then, sort of out of the blue, she asked me, “Hey—when are we going to do that motorcycle trip from Tibet to Mongolia?” I had been putting her off on this trip for years. And, true to form, I kept on stalling. I said, “We’ll have time to do that. We’ve been talking about it for so long now, I’m sure we’ll make it happen.”
Lara leaves behind a lot of these interrupted plans: for adventures like trips and expeditions, for ongoing conversations and for a life with Chad. Over the past two weeks I’ve realized how many times I think to myself “Oh, I’ll tell Lara about that”. Now, even those little plans are cut off.
When I look around at everyone here, I can imagine the things for all of us that are cut off in the middle by Lara’s death—maybe a conversation about a mountain to climb, or maybe just a plan to catch up soon. I take some comfort in the idea that we probably all share those feelings, that all of those interruptions are the things that connect us today and bring us together to celebrate Lara and to say goodbye to her.
Goodbye, Lara. I love you and I miss you very much.
Dave Kalil
