I have a long history mistrusting and ultimately not believing in the written word. So, to convey and express, especially about a person who has had a profound effect upon my life, and whom I’ve loved falls short, but what else do we have? Pictures, yes, music he played for me, his harmonica playing? I give this scrawl to my close friend Chris Boissevain who appeared soon after Thijs’ death to need me to comment.
Thijs helped me understand inextricably many things and words/ language was one of them. He wasn’t a writer, he practiced reading; he left the writing to the talents of Angie and Chris. His talent, genius really, and what he thrived in naturally was in the physical phenomenal world. Anybody who reads this here already knows that about him. Still some may not know that this is probably where my respect, appreciation, and perhaps a sense of wonder about him started…so long ago. It was how he lived and his unique countenance that surrounded his lifestyle that I responded too in the beginning. At the time I desperately needed a different way from being raised in the suburbs of Sunnyvale as a young kid. I moved to Los Altos Hills as a teenager with my family that brought with them suburban values; the manicured golfing lawn where no golfing clubs existed. Just over the hill was a different aesthetic surrounding Duveneck Vally. Some families, or so it seemed to me, took refuge from the insanity of growth the lit up Silicon Valley and mass produced values. Eventually though Guy Ayers I met the Boissevain family with whom I found a yet to be revealed; kinship, respect, had shared fun, joy, laughter, interests, sharing, raising our children of the same age, honored, and lived many beautiful years which I will take with me to my dying day. Long ago Tobie gave me the old family’s 1971 510 wagon that Thijs, Chris, Tobe, and especially I think (Angie) drove. Thijs liked cars, had a keen eye for good engineering of course and bought this one apparently from what Rev Ayers said, ( Guy’s dad ), “the only Japanese car that he could fit in comfortably”. Later Thijs gave me his trailer that he resuscitated after Tom Sherlock threw it away down in some gully off Sherlock Road, so the story goes. I tow it with the 510 to the annual dump days here in the hills. Any old who, I drive this car, a sort of memorial to Thijs; seeing my face occasionally in the speedometer glass like his did, I reflect on him often. ( Still have it, after the recent paint job, the reglued plastic Olympus camera box that carry a collection of metric wrenches )
another note-
On occasion I sit out back of my house, sometimes with a beer and gaze drifting back as I look at Elephant Mountain from a farther distance than where Thijs and family viewed it just outside their house. Realizing long ago Thijs was a young father over there tucked away from the hustle of the growing bay area...thriving inventing, his mind liberated by the big sky of Duveneck Valley. In a way; a minor way as I am too here. It warms me to imagine the precious time for my dear close friend as a boy of Thijs. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the beauty that existed.
" The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one;you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same, Nor should you be the same nor would you want to" Elizabeth Kubler Ross and John Hessler