Another Funeral

Yesterday James and I attended the funeral of a former UofA classmate of mine.  His name was also James and he died in a hiking accident in mid-August.  They still haven't been able to find his body, but his wife went ahead and planned a memorial service anyway.  It was a nice service, and a good reminder about what a great guy James was.  It was also interesting because there were about 10-15 people from our mechanical engineering graduating class -- some of which I haven't seen since 1993.

During those school days, we had these intense lab and/or project classes that were done in groups...and during our third year, four of us formed a group that stayed together for the rest of our undergraduate years (3 in total...year 3, year 4, and year 5...yes, I said 5).

Anyway, my group consisted of me, James, Craig, and Cam.  And we spent hours together each week doing this work...hours.  But, let's be honest, it wasn't ALL work, we also had a lot of fun together.

[But, in the interest of complete disclosure, my main focus during those years wasn't on my academics...I had a social life that needed a lot of attention. I wasn't the best group member]

So the point of this post, is that attending yesterday's service sent me on a trip down memory lane.  And I have so many great memories from those engineering years.  I just keep thinking about that lab group and the different personalities and talents we all contributed.  Craig actually spoke at the funeral, and mentioned how I had brought James into the group because I knew that he would raise our GPA -  and he did.

The other thing I realized, is that although I have so many memories from my life that I love to replay and savour, I am always, always surprised when people have memories of me.  And when they are happy (or funny) memories of me, I'm always touched.  I guess I'm just that narcissistic.