"Jump in and get wet!"

I have received hundreds of emails in the past several days. I have read each and every one of them but unfortunately cannot find the time to respond. Today I received one from a one of the people at COMSTAR that has worked for Chris for quite awhile. She is also a very good friend of mine and our family.

She and Chris recently went to Las Vegas for a conference at the end of June. I will share with you her email in it entirety. I think it says it all... I miss her so much.

One of my most treasured memories with Chris happened when we were in Vegas. I’m sure you already heard Chris’ version of the story, but I don’t know if she told you everything. We were at the CareerBuilder/Barenaked Ladies concert which was poolside at the Hard Rock Hotel. The first thing we noticed when we got there was that the stage was centered in such a way that you HAD to be in the water in order to be close to the band. Everyone seemed to be sitting in the cabanas and hanging out around the pool, so we staked out a great location sitting on the edge of the water (and pretty close to the stage). As the concert started and some more of the alcohol was flowing, people began to slowly brave their way to the center island portion. We had a great time laughing at the people who were trying so desperately not to get wet. The BEST was this guy who came out of the water with a towel wrapped around him. All of a sudden the towel dropped and it turned out that he had NOTHING ON underneath! (Thank goodness we got the backside!)

I guess seeing all of this craziness inspired Chris and she decided that we had to get in the pool. I looked at her like she had finally lost it! “You do realize that I have on a white skirt and you have on white pants?!” I asked her. But it didn’t matter to her, “You’ll never see these people again, so who cares?” she said. I continued to flounder with it, thinking about what people would think of me, that if Charlie were here HE would certainly do it - but I just couldn’t do it. I could tell she was disappointed, which hurt me – why couldn’t I do something this simple for her? Later on she turned to me and said, “You know Marianne, sometimes in life you just have to jump in and get wet.” I knew that moment was something that I would always remember (I still have the pictures of us on my phone from that night), and especially what she said. I hope that I’m able to able to do just that – jump in and get wet - and make her proud.

I love you guys.