Kirwin's Blog

Death of My Oldest Friend

A Tribute to Greig Placette

August 30, 2013

Most people here know me but for the record, I’m Kirwin, Greig’s oldest friend (as opposed to family, cousins, etc.). I hold that record because our parents were best friends in high school and they did everything together, including having babies. Even though my parents had been married for over six years without successfully having a baby and were seriously considering adoption, all it took was for his mom, Gloria, to get pregnant for my mom, who is here today, to get with the program and have me three months after Greig was born. The same thing happened almost four years later when my sister Kathy was born a couple of months after Theresa, Greig’s sister. Thus, the nearest thing Kathy and I had to a sister and brother growing up was Theresa and Greig. And that bond has lasted our entire lives. I don’t know what happened to this conception cycle between the Placettes and Drouets when Renee was born a few years later but I suspect that Mom’s labor difficulties having two kids that weighed over 9 lbs. superseded any thoughts of trying again so I think that’s when we got our first dog! But I digress.

Anyway, Greig and I did EVERYTHING together growing up. One of my first memories was going to Barbara Borsman’s Dance Studio at age 4 and taking tap dancing—with Grieg. Not long after that I was a train bearer for the very first CavOilcade queen—with Grieg. When our parents took vacation, they did it together by renting a beach house at Crystal Beach for a week. This was pretty much an annual affair in those early years and Greig and I and Kathy and Theresa were always together. When I caught my first fish at Rollover Pass—it was with Greig. When I went crabbing for the first time, I did it with Greig. My first memory of someone dying was with Greig when a little boy drowned at Rollover Pass on a fishing trip there. So many early memories during those times and always with Greig. Gloria and Mom used to laugh about how Kathy and Theresa fought every time they got together on those trips. Theresa wanted to go one way on the beach and Kathy wanted to go the other so they went their separate ways. Not Greig and I however. We were always in sync and very rarely disagreed about anything. We kept that bond and affinity for each other our entire lives.

By the time school started, Greig and I did not see each other quite as often since he went to a different elementary and junior high school than me. However, we still spent the summers together at the beach along with many mutual family outings like birthdays, etc. When my parents went to New York City for my Dad to receive an award for saving a young man’s life at a Little League game, Kathy and I stayed with the Placettes. Little did we know that we were just mirroring the same friendship that our parents had for each other in our own lives. I guess that’s what makes this so hard for me because I assumed I’d be sitting on a couch with Greig sometimes in the future when we would be in our late eighties saying goodbye just like his dad, Harold, and my Dad did when Pop passed away in 2009.

When I received the call from my daughter to call my sister concerning Greig on Tuesday morning, it didn’t sound good but I never imagined it was going to be this bad. When I heard the details from Kathy, I was numb because it really was hard to comprehend the magnitude of what happened to Greig. No tears were shed that morning and really for most of that day. It was not until I read the loving tribute from my daughter, Keely, Greig’s goddaughter, that afternoon that the welled-up emotions hit me like a freight train and I let them wash all over me. I remember saying to me as much as him: “Dammit Greig, why couldn’t you be a coward like most people so you’d be alive today and continue growing old with me and the rest of us?” But then I knew that Greig would always have made the choice to protect an innocent person ahead of himself—after all, his DNA came from the tenderness of Gloria and the strength of Harold. He was hard wired to save those people that fateful night.

I’ll leave it to others to tell you the detail about all of Greig’s other qualities, and there were many. He was a self-made man, comedian, fearless cold caller, a man of faith, and a wonderful son, brother, father and grandfather. But most important to me, he was always there for me as my closest friend—I love you my brother.