Thank you all for coming. I am so glad we could come together 10 years on to celebrate James and remember the kind, generous and extraordinary person he was. 10 years. It seems so long ago but also that phone call is etched in my memory like it was yesterday. The casual call of “I love you” as you left the house in the early morning on your way to the airport. But then the heartache, and the indescribable grief that followed. 

While it is a sombre and heartbreaking occasion to mark not having James in our lives for 10 years, I thought it would be nice to spend time together with those that loved him to share our stories and honour his memory.  His bond with his family as well as friends, who were his chosen family, was so strong, and us being all together today is testament to how he felt about you all. For those of you who didn’t get to meet James, I know he would have been so excited to meet you all.

I picked tonight’s location because it was where we threw a small surprise birthday party for James’ 26th birthday.  I actually thought it was his 25th bday but looking through James YouTube profile recently I found the wonderful slideshow Julia created, which James had posted to cherish, and he had captioned it his 26th bday, so I stand corrected! This was the room where he thought I had organised a birthday dinner date but instead walked him up the stairs to be surprised by his family and a few friends. It felt like this was a good place to have this dinner together, I just wish he would walk through that door right now and surprise us.

We have shared a lot of our James memories together these past 10 years. Tonight, I thought I would share how even in his death James managed to help me through the hardest days of my life and I also thought I would share what I think James perspective might have been on some of the big events and changes that have happened in the last decade. 

There were a few events that helped me move forward in my grief journey. The first was going on the trip back to the USA with Mattie, Sam, Steve and Cal. The plan had been for them to visit us in Chicago, so we decided to keep this plan even though it was only 6 weeks after we lost him. James was with us every step of the way as we planned the itinerary around all the places he had told me he’d wanted to go. Like telling me it was a better deal to go to the 2nds ice hockey team the Wolves instead of the Blackhawks as you could get front row seats for $40 instead of $100 for nose bleeds. “We don’t know the rules anyway, so it’s way better to sit up front for cheap to get the experience” he said. And of course he was 100% right. To also seeing the beautiful monument valley and then driving to the middle of no where to see the “4 corners” where you can be in 4 states at once. It was a healing trip filled with tears and laughter and we could feel his presence with us throughout. 

The next was when I decided I should do something new each month on the 22nd. I had found that date so hard to deal with each month, it was proof that time was marching on without him. One day I was going through old emails from him and found a birthday gift voucher he’d given me a year before that I hadn’t been able to use before moving to Chicago. It was for a trapeze class. James as you all probably know was an amazing gift giver. He was always gifting me experiences to push me out of my comfort zone and enjoy life. So I decided I would book in and do the trapeze class on the 22nd the next month and it was so fun and it was something that I actually looked forward to instead of dreading that day. From then, I decided to book in new fun adventures each month on the 22nd to live life with no regrets and do things he would have loved, to help try to experience life for the both of us. I went knife throwing, did archery, fencing, Bollywood dancing and even tried Crossfit! Even after the monthly 22nd was no longer a scary date for me I continue to try new things and tick items off my bucket list and trying to live a life of answering “yes” when asked to try something new, just how James lived his life.

Another big moment was traveling to Patagonia with Julia. This was James ultimate bucket list location and I am so glad we managed to go there in him memory. Yet again, James knew what was what, as Patagonia was one of the most beautiful places on earth. The glaciers, the hiking, the food! I try to picture what he would have said and been like on that trip with us. He would have been our Spanish translator (yet another talent he managed to accomplish on top of everything else he was good at). He would have carried my bag when I got tired and let me eat the rest of the dessert. He would have drunk the fancy red wine even though he didn’t like wine because he’d want the full experience and he would have made sure we got to the airport 4 hours early just to be sure. 

I then tacked Antarctica to the trip because it was my ultimate bucket list item to tick off my 7th continent. While this trip was once in a lifetime journey for me, I can’t help but think that James had chosen right for him, that Patagonia was a better fit for his style of travel. Whenever we went anywhere he did not like to sit still. If we went to the beach he’s be renting a kayak or snokelling, James was the one who really helped me fall in love with hiking and being adventurous. But the Antarctica trip was spent a lot of the time sitting on a boat or doing day trips where we sat on a dingy viewing the amazing icebergs. I think he might have gone a little stir crazy. That being said, he would have definitely made his money worth at the buffet meals 3 times a day! 😊 The man could eat!

I referenced James’ advice for a happy Karen in my eulogy, some advice I had accumulated from him over the years that I referenced a lot in the early years after his death. I regret that I haven’t continued to live as closely to these principles as I would have liked and have found a revised sense to reconnect and revisit his advice in the lead up to the 10yr anniversary. I thought I would share it again here as this might be extra useful for Catherine and Nathan who are just starting out in their adult lives (man I feel old!)

 

And while James has helped guide me though the last 10 years I also keep being reminded how much has changed and how much James has missed. 

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• Electric Cars – Boy if James had known Mattie would have been moving to Silicon Valley a year after we’d moved to Chicago and he would have had 4 of his best friends living in California, I have a feeling I would have been convinced to move to the Groupon office in San Fran! The conversations he would have with you about Telsa would have been never ending!

• Steaming services – When we moved to Chicago in 2013, Netflix had just started, and it wasn’t available yet in Australia. House of Cards the first ever streaming tv series had come out and we watched it together, amazed that we could watch the whole thing in one go! I remember him saying it was going to change the way people watched TV and he was so right!

• Donald Trump becoming president – Living in Chicago when that happened I was so devastated and remember thinking that this wasn’t the country James had wanted to live in. He would have had so much to say about the downfall in American politics. 

• Impossible burgers and fake meat – James was a big eater and loved his burgers and ribs. But he was always so interested in modern science advancement and I think he would have got on board the fake meat train. Maybe not entirely but from a sustainability perspective he would have given it a go. I can picture us doing a blindfold experiment testing if he could tell the difference!

• AI and chat GPT – with all emerging new technology I always wish I had my IT guru and ethics professor with me to hear his take and understand based on hours and hours of reading what he thought the implications would be on something like this. 

• Demon’s winning the premiership in 2021 – James would have been ecstatic. He was so loyal to the Dees and stuck by them during the lows and he just knew they were going to turn it around. He would have been so proud!

• Lockdowns – while I think a lot of us watched a lot of TV and baked bread, James being someone who never wasted a minute, I’m sure he would have coded a new app and come out of lockdown with a successful new startup!

• Virtual Reality Gaming – In the tradition of continuing to do new things that James would have loved to do and experiencing new things, Steve and I did Virtual Reality gaming yesterday. I remember James doing a real life gaming scenario with actors pretending to be zombies which he thoroughly enjoyed. In his words “When the zombie apocalypse starts, who is going to save the world?...Nerds, apparently” So I knew he would have enjoyed the amazing technology of a virtual reality zombie apocalypse. And I showed how much I love him by doing the zombie apocalypse and scaring the pants off myself!

 

I could go on and on, and I already have. You were such an amazing, loving, kind and smart man and the world has lost so much not having you in it these past 10 years. We continue to honour your memory and you are forever missed. I love you.