Gregory was always an easygoing baby and marched to his own drummer his entire life. As his sister, I usually just followed along. I can remember giggling when he and his school friend Brendan Fitzgerald put dog food in cookies they were baking for school. They had marked the "dog food" cookies with foil. However, their plan was doomed when Mom took the cookies out of the oven, saw the foil and took it off. When they got to school and opened the package of cookies, they could not find the foil and realized they had to fess up. Greg and his friend had to throw out the entire batch of cookies. Although, I think Mom would have rather made them EAT the cookies.
I also remember Greg and I got locked out of the house and he said "not to worry" and had me follow him to the back of the house. He showed me a way to break into the basement through the window and pop it back in...backwards. Well, we got busted hours later when Mom noticed the window was put in backwards and thought someone had broken into the house.
Over the years, I think he tried Mom and Dad's patience. He fell of his bike once and the neighbor brought him back home, dressed head to toe in Band-Aids. Years later, he was eating a piece of bacon while riding his bike, fell off and actually hurt his ear pretty badly. I can clearly remember a neighbor kid running in the house with the bloody piece of bacon worried that it was Greg's ear. Fortunately, it wasn't.
I can remember falling off my bike and Greg coming to my rescue. I had some pretty bad scrapes and he cleaned me up, picking every piece of gravel out of my arms because I refused to go to the doctor.
He made the best chocolate chip cookie pie, the best chocolate crackles and the best cosmopolitan I've ever had. He would also respond to my emails anytime I had a computer question.
I know my parents rolled their eyes whenever his hair changed color, or when he had his ear pierced. I just remember that he continued to march to his own beat.
Greg touched more lives than anyone else I know. This has been eveident to us this past week reading the endless comments from friends of Greg's all over the world. I think for every person in this room, there are at least 10 more we don't even know about.
As Greg's family, we want to thank our friends and family as well as Greg's family for their support over the past several years and we invite you all back to our home to help us to continue to remember Greg.