Thinking about you a lot, today and always. miss you forever. #LiveforLou

It is crazy how time flies, still hard believe even after 10 years.

Louie, I'm so sorry I'm late but you've been in my thoughts a lot these many years. I remember us all starting our swimming journey together 25 years ago. I was so blessed to be a small part of your swimming journey both at the Norseman and with Nauset. I was always impressed with your level of commitment both to swimming and your personal health. We had some years apart and when we reunited, I was stunned with how physically fit you were and how dedicated you were to swimming. In our one year of high school together, I was very impressed with how far you had come and how powerful you were in the water. I was so proud to see how you continually improved after that. I remember vividly that season together you and Rose goofing around deck both home and away while still being so dedicated and focused. I truly admired that in you. I also wanted to let you know that the time we hit each other head-on, it was completely my fault and I'm still sorry about that.

You were an outstanding teammate, friend, and human being.

Love,

Chase

I love you, Louie, and carry you in my heart. I miss your smiles and hugs in real time!
G’Sue. ❤️

Hi Louie...I love you.

"No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear."
C.S Lewis

I saw the fundraiser a few weeks back and thought of how much you are missed by those who loved you and those of us you didn't know you. From afar you inspire us to greater things. A reminder that while your time here was too brief, a comet burns most fiercely at it's zenith, leaving us with a memory that can never be erased.

Hi Louie.. Happy Belated again! It's not that I haven't been thinking of you - I have - but I just couldn't quite get my mind made up about what I wanted to say. We had an unbelievable Live for Lou fundraiser this year!! Just a wonderful day with lots of people thinking about you and other loved ones who have left us too soon. We raised over $70,000 which will be used to help people get and stay sober, as well as give some help tor athletes who need some $$$ to go to College and play a sport. The 'vibe' at the fundraiser was unbelievable and everyone cheered when the sun finally came out after a dubious start to the day. I think it was you looking down on us and flashing that beautiful smile at all of us out on the deck!!! I love you Louie and think about you every day....... keep smiling down on us!

Hi, Louie. Thinking of you today on your birthday (and every day of course!). Just want you to know you are the opposite of forgotten. You live on in so many ways, you wouldn’t even believe it. Love you.

Hi Louie - Happy belated birthday. We were thinking of you all day (as usual) and as per our custom had a dinner at home that we know you would love. Your loss has motivated us to do several things in memory of you and your spirit. The memorial garden in downtown Wellfleet is probably the most obvious and honestly came out beautifully! It is truly a sanctuary for quiet reflection and thoughts about you and the others who have left us too soon. I love you so much...... peace.

Happy 30th, Louie. Wish I were pondering what to get you for your big birthday instead of wondering what you’d be up to now if you hadn’t left us. Love you, buddy.

Louie,
I miss your smile and your kindness. We have all been so touched by your brief existence in our lives. Your memory lives on in all of us!
Frampa

Hey Big Lou. I can't believe it's been 4 years since you left us. Of course I think about you every day and usually it brings a smile to my face, but sometimes it saddens me and occasionally a tear runs down my face. I miss you so much and wonder why this happened. I don't know and probably never will but the love and the memories are vivid. I so remember your smile, your hugs, your inquisitive nature, your ability to see things as they really are... I love you forever. Dad

Louie, I think of you so much. Sometimes I am teary and sad. Sometimes I feel close to you and smile. By now I have four Live For Lou bracelets. Seeing “2018” on the one I wore yesterday was particularly sad - four whole years today since you were here with us. Tonight your family and Madelyn will meet for dinner at East Bay Grill where I took you and Nick for dinner after we went to King Richards Faire - that memory is a warm one of course!! That was an awesome day! We all remember your firm eye contact, your wonderful smile and your Louie hugs! And when we are very lucky we experience them and feel you are with us. We are with you always and love you to the moon. G’Sue

Happy Birthday Handsome! Miss you Big Lou.

Dear Louie - Today Mom & I had kind of a mellow day. We thought about you constantly. We went down to Cahoon Hollow Beach and reflected. It was a beautiful crisp winter day, with wispy clouds hanging over the ocean. We miss you so much and love you like crazy! Your candle will forever burn in our hearts.

Dear Louie. It's so weird to miss you so much and yet have you with me every day. How'm I doing?I know you'd have lots to say. xo

Dear, dear Louie! You are always in my heart.
We miss you so, so much and love you forever.
Hugs,
G'Sue

I love you every minute ,every day Louie! And can feel your special hugs. Hugs and love to you. G'Sue

Hey, Handsome. Thinking of you today and feeling the love. Miss you every day, Sweet Louie.

Happy Birthday Louie! I miss you like crazy but I know you're up there smiling down on us. Love you....!!

Happy birthday big Lou! "I don't cry because I'm sad...I smile because it happened." I miss you brother! Love always, Pick

Hi Louie,
Thinking of your birth not your death. Miss you tons!
Frampa

Hi Louie! I took off work today to be with my thoughts and feelings about you. And by total surprise I came across my journal about our trip to Yellowstone when you were 10 years old. It reminded me that we stared a lot at Peter Fonda whose flight (same as ours) was delayed 6 hours. After we stared at him for awhile, we went to the Mall of America theme park and aquarium. You especially enjoyed the virtual rides - enough to ride them alone after I became too dizzy. When our flight finally boarded, we walked past Peter (he was in first-class, of course) and he liked your Patriots cap. You became buddies with my brother Greg who took us to the hot pool in Prey, Wyoming where you liked to "disappear" so I could find you. I love you Louie! I miss you! G'Sue

Louie you're in our thoughts today... like every other day, but especially today. To say that I've gotten used to not seeing you is a lie. I still miss you like crazy and of course will love you forever. I often think of the beach when I think about you. Bonfires, surfing, fishing, and hanging with friends and family. Our weekly trips in the summer to the outer beach were epic. Those are some of my favorite memories! I found this pic on my computer. It was from our trip to Cozumel in 2014. I think it captures you to a tee!
Please keep watching over us and visiting us in our dreams....

Got in my car to drive to work and listened to all of the songs that make me think of you. And I cried a lot. Then I put on Louie Louie. Ever try crying when that songs on? Not pretty. I finished it off with a little Chantilly Lace by the Big Bopper.

I remember being in the car and you dancing and singing every word in your best Louie Big Bopper voice. It is one of my favorite memories.

By the time I got to work today I was laughing.Miss you Big Lou.

Happy Birthday Louie! We miss your presence. We miss your sence of humor, your sensitivity and your loyalty to our family. We miss YOU.
Frampa

Louie we celebrated your 27th birthday last night in style! We had your favorite meal - Lobster, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, baked stuffed potatoes, and avocado salad. Nick, Katy, Rose, Petie, Mom and me toasted you, talked about you, and loved you (as we always will). Somehow we know that you were looking down on us with a smile! We miss you terribly but believe that you are our angel watching over us and loving us back. Here's to BIG Lou!

Hope you're having a Happy Birthday Louie.....Please say Hi to our "Matty" for us. Forever missed and always in our hearts.....

A solid hip hip hooray for Big Lou indeed! I was thinking of and missing you all day yesterday man. Thanks for dropping by my dreams last night. The four OG cousins in all of their glory. Its crazy how realistic a dream can be. I woke up feeling like I had been hanging out with you the whole night. It was awesome, just as good as I remember it. Thanks.

Louie The love that you gave to all of us will never be forgotten. You are cherished and your life had such great meaning to so many. The live for Lou fund continues for all of us to enjoy your spirit and kind heart with so many others. I miss you every day

"For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?"

"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance."
Kahil Gibran

"if ever there is a tomorrow
when we are not together...

There is something
you must remember:

You are braver than you believe,
stronger than you seem,
and smarter than you think.

But the most important thing is,
even if we're apart...

     I'll always be with you.

    - Winnie the Pooh
    By A. A. Milne

You are forever in my heart, Louie!
I love you!
G'Sue

Happy Birthday Louie. We all miss you and love you so much.

Now it's been a couple months
Since you've been gone
Things have largely returned to normal
As everyone said they would

Now it's less desperate
I lock myself in the bathroom to
chain smoke and cry less and less
I still teeter between weeping and
ferocious booming laughter
But not as often

Now as the world spins by
I've started spinning with it
Instead of standing aside
Wondering why everyone else is still
going about their business
As if nothing ever happened

Now the tattoo of your name is just a part of me
like the rest of my skin
No longer a burning brand of solemn remembrance
I washed the sweatpants I took from your room
Your smell is officially gone
they're just a part of my wardrobe
The first time I put them on
i could feel what you felt like inside them
It was surreal and comforting and awful
Now they're a rumpled addition to my heap of laundry

Now I'm just a little more sensitive and a little more irritable
But people have forgotten why
I lash out and think to myself
"I am just not over this"
I don't make the excuse
It's been too long for my grief to be socially acceptable
Though it remains. Albeit less and less

Now you're like my secret, hidden from the world
Except for when I'm alone and pull you out of my memory
Don't worry please, you will not be forgotten
You'll be a part of every part of me
Even if I'm the only one who knows it
I'll pull you through this life
My mind is a strange place for a person to live
but it's the only place I have to keep you

Now you're just a thing I try to write poetry about
Meaningless words on a page
That don't do you justice

Louie, I remember reading to you when you were two. You didn't talk much but you were very inquisitive. When you began to talk you delighted us with you own Louie pronunciations. I will always miss your inquisitive mind and your free spirit.
Frampa

Wrote this for you, Lou. Love and miss you always. You changed our lives. For better and worse.

Day Is Done...

We hadn’t yet shed the blinders of innocence,
And couldn’t appreciate your sunny significance.

Your magnificent sunset was, in hindsight, defined
when the night it preceded was cruelly assigned.

We could only look back at your brightness with sadness
Mixed with anger, regret and, at times, wistful gladness.

To have been in your circle, meant fortune untold –
But in our unconscious bliss, we too late saw the gold.

When your light dimmed so soon, twilight was our shroud,
for a disbelieving, numb moment we lived in a cloud.

Night, when it came, arrived with sharp vengeance,
and no plans of allowing pure daylight an entrance.

Fickle dreams burst like bubbles in our nightmare of pain.
If we ever wake up, sun won’t shine the same.

In honor of St. Paddy's Day

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

Heard this song lyric in Frank Turner's "The Way I Tend to Be", on the way to school this morning. Thought of Louie...

"Love is about the changes you make and not just three small words. I remember you. And the way you shine like truth in all you do."

In memory of Louie.

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To express feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest
Hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who asks nothing, does nothing,
Has nothing and is nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they
Cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live,
Chained by their attitudes, they are a slave
They have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

Words to "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley

"Three Little Birds"

"Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right! "

Rise up this mornin',
Smile with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Each by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', ("This is my message to you-ou-ou: ")

Singin': "Don't worry 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry (don't worry) 'bout a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right! "

Rise up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Each by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', "This is my message to you-ou-ou: "

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing, worry about a thing, oh!
Every little thing gonna be all right. Don't worry! "
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing" - I won't worry!
"'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."

Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right" - I won't worry!
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."
Singin': "Don't worry about a thing, oh no!
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Louie's senior quote for the year book:

"Living it up in high school, it went by fast. The parties the summers the crazy nights are all in the past. It was a good time. Jesse you are my bro and best friend, Cali. is going to be sick. Eric don’t forget Sundays, you’re the man. Nick the steam room! You’re my bro rage it next year. Shout out to the whole crew, you guys are my bros good times with you never forget the late nights. You guys know how to live it up. Last but not least, Mom and Dad I love you. Thanks for everything, You are the best! Alex Hass R.I.P"


“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind.”
                                                             Bob Marley

"Live from moment to moment, just as if every new moment is all
there is. For that, in truth, is all there is."

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
-William Wordsworth

One of my earlier fun memories of Louie.
The Lebarts spent a few winters in Naples when Louie and Nick were still too young to go to school. One year we visited them and had so much fun. Our stay at their house on Cajeput Road started out on a funny note.
Louie was so excited for us to arrive that he waited out at the end of the driveway for a long time, watching for our rental car. When he finally saw us driving down the road, he became so hyper-excited he actually couldn’t contain himself. He just started running, right into and through the hedge of bushes that lined the driveway. He was crashing around in there like a panicked deer. It was so funny to us, but he was embarrassed by all the attention and his overabundance of emotions.
One night during that visit we parents went out and Samantha, Louie, Max and Nick had a babysitter. When we got home, Holly and I went to the sleep sofa where Sam and Louie were and asked them how the night was and what they did. Sam was around 8 and Louie around 5. He was so cute. He said “Oh we just hacked around. And then later, Sam and I went upstairs to see how the little guys were doonin’.” (Little guys being Max,4, and Nick, 3.) He was so earnest in his role as big brother/older cousin.
Then Holly and Sam and Louie and I hung out on the sleep sofa and made “funny” faces. Louie was so bad at it, but tried so hard it made us totally crack up. Holly and I still make “funny” Louie faces to each other to this day. It was such a happy night and Louie was so relaxed and confident and pleased to be part of the “big cousin” duo with Sam.
As the kids got older, the boys became much closer and the one year age difference between them basically shrank to nothing. But, even if they were the three musketeers who shared friends and adventures, Louie was always very much Big Lou. And he and Samantha always had a special bond as the 2 oldest cousins.

Louie your spirit lives on forever and in all of us!
"Your spiritual nature is free. What an astounding revelation!
Now you take that home today, and you say to yourself, 'my spiritual
nature is free.' And you ponder what it means and what it can mean
increasingly to you as a human being occupying a very limited and
restricted earth. The spiritual nature knows no obstacles, no dif-
ficulties, no threats, no rivers too wide, no mountain is too high,
it is in its very nature free to be itself and because it is itself
and only itself, having no connection with this world, it is happy.
There’s nothing that the lower world can do to take away what it
lives in its enjoyment its authentic enjoyment."

Louie- your contagious flame of love and ambitious energy will be forever burning in our hearts, lighting our way as we travel through our heartache and memories with you. We aspire to live life like you did, Lou; every day was full of adventure and your genuine care for those around you. Just as you lived every day as a success, we will live every day to be successful for you. You touched more people in more ways than you could have every imagined Big Lou. Keep us safe as you watch your family and friends mourn your loss, and celebrate your never ending light.

Louie I will alway remember you as that fun loving Cub Scout, Rest in Peace.

Take care of your baby bro Louie. Can't help but be mad at you. But I love you nonetheless. Good day to to you sir.

Louie you will be missed forever.

Louie, you will forever hold a special place in my heart. Your smile & laugh play over and over in my thoughts. You always cheered me on at swim meets, hugged me when I was feeling down, and knew how to make me smile no matter what the situation. You will be forever missed, xoxoxo.