[tg] Patrick Ross's memorial service: report

[Judy Anderson <yduJ cs stanford edu>]

I started to write this as an email to just Sue, because I knew she
could not attend the memorial, but now I am sending it to everybody who
did not attend. (And people who did go, because mailing lists.)

Patrick's memorial service was pretty well attended; I'm guessing there
were about 100 people there. Tech squares fielded "not quite a
hex". Various relatives got up and shared memories of Patrick. I learned
more about his non-dancing life than I had earlier known (which is to
say, I hadn't really known anything). Did you know he lived in Japan for
seven years? And he ended up in finance because he needed a job and a
Japanese financial firm was advertising and he was like "I speak
Japanese, maybe I can learn the finance part". Anyway, I thought that
was interesting.

Geo seemed completely overwhelmed by all the support he was getting and
also the whole loss is still weighing very heavily on him.

I got to meet Geo's sister (who is now sibling, because they have come
out as non-binary), the one who lived in Attleboro. They now live in
Pawtucket. I introduced myself as the person who sometimes hosts square
dances in Sharon, and they had heard things about me (which I did not
inquire too closely of), so that was fun.

The A2 tip was a little bit too hard/fast for the mostly Times Squares
people I was dancing with. Ett was timing off of the square in the front
which was specifically a bunch of people that had regularly danced with
Geo and Patrick. It was seven people, Patrick was the phantom, and the
rest pretty much dance C4. The rest of us were invited to make squares
in the back, where there were 3 or 4 squares.

Despite probably being chosen to be easy, I screwed up the line dance a
lot, but at least with line dancing, if you screw up, as long as you are
walking in the general direction that you're supposed to be, you don't
bother anybody else. I think towards the end I actually mostly had it
together.

There was a beautiful quilt that somebody made out of some of Patrick's
favorite T-shirts. I want somebody to do this for me. (Of course, I'll
be dead, so maybe I don't get a choice?) The back side of the quilt was
square dance logos. I took pictures. There were the usual photo boards
and a loop of photos on a large screen, some with friends and family,
and some with just Patrick alone or with pets.

Anyway, I thought it was all very well done, and everybody was totally
there for Geo and it was really good.