Patrick

 I went to college with Patrick, but I didn't really know him until he moved to San Francisco around 2013 - my housemate, David, asked if I was cool with someone crashing in our living room (which was extremely empty because we mostly just lived out of our rooms). He was coming to SF to do a coding boot camp because he was bored of being an actuary.

 

Over the next ten years David, Patrick, and I went to a pho shop (Sunflower) more than three hundred times - enough that the owner knew us by name and default order and would start it when we walked in the door. We messaged each other more than three thousand times, and lived together for more than six years, in three separate different houses.

 

Patrick is one of the smartest people I know. He is an engineer's engineer: he grasps math and physics easily, and went from being an actuary (numbers! probabilities! data!) to being a firmware engineer for a med-tech company, making devices that helped people. A bit more on that later.

 

Patrick isn't an engineer in just one thing: he's an engineer in all things, because he likes understanding things. Tinkering with them. Taking them apart. You might have imagined that he was just a software engineer, but you would realize just how wrong you are when you peeked inside his garage. His Honda s2000 is his pride and joy, he's owned and repaired at least half a dozen motorcycles, and he can tell you the internals and schematics of a Breville Dual Boiler - that's an espresso machine - because he's thoroughly disassembled one. Multiple times.

 

You are, I suspect, thinking of someone nerdy, and, I mean, the man wore this ridiculous Star Trek shirt, so... yeah, he's nerdy.

 

 

 

But he's also spent a lot of time reading. He has taken time to think about and appreciate art. He could make you an excellent latte or a cappuccino or a gibraltar/cortado and tell you exactly what it's doing, even as he makes a beautiful heart in latte art. He shot for a while on a film camera because he wanted to. He's spent a lot of time learning.

 

I don't think he ever stopped learning.

 

 

Another thing that was not very nerdy (or maybe it's extra nerdy, depending on how you look at it): he's a goddamn monster on a bike. On a motorcycle, yes, but also on a bicycle. He would get up before dawn and do a leisurely fifty miles from the city through the Golden Gate Bridge and around Marin and then back before most people got up for breakfast. There's a bike race - though I'm not sure it's a 'race', per se - called the Death Ride. It's a hundred miles. It's fourteen thousand feet of climbing. It looks like this:

 

 

And Patrick completed it for, er, fun.

 

He smiles a lot. He's silly. He's funny. He loves life. He loves life in a way that I think a lot of people lose sight of, which is that... it's not just about the rat race and making more money. He could've easily been a principal engineer at a tech company clearing a million dollars a year, but he didn't want to live that life. He wanted to live the life he had, where he did something that was valuable and interesting and he got to spend a lot of time engaging in all of his numerous hobbies (coffee. cars. motorcycle maintenance. coffee. restoring random things. fixing things. travel. coffee) - and, of course, spending time with his people.

 

You were his people. I was his people. I don't know anyone who knew Patrick who didn't think that he was not just a good person, but one of the best people they know. And I don't mean that in a trite 'of course everyone is a good person deep down' kind of way. Patrick is a genuine, kind, caring person. He does kindnesses for you, big and small, because he can. He makes coffee for you because he enjoys the act of making coffee for you. He give you rides in his s2000 to share the experience that he fell in love with - the feel of the car, the road, the shifting, having the top down and cruising around. Patrick is and has always been a joy to be around.

 

This is Patrick, at Sunflower, holding Ethan:

 

 

And this is Patrick, fresh off the track, with Ray and David:

 

 

 

And this is Patrick, doing his best Mario:

 

 

 

And this is, quintessentially, Patrick:

 

 

 

He made my life better by being in it. And he made me better, by teaching me about coffee. About kindness. About motorcycle maintenance. About friendship. About taking time to cuddle cats and slow down. About love, and how to know you're in love.

-

 

Patrick was on a trip to San Diego a year ago when he had a seizure out of nowhere. A biopsy was conducted, and a lesion was discovered on his motor cortex. It was a high grade glioma. Because of its location on the motor cortex, resection - surgery to remove the tumor - was not recommended. He proceeded through rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, and while he lost some ground, he was stable - able to walk around with assistance, able to come to the friend events and gatherings we had: July 4th, Thanksgiving, the Superbowl party. Most of all, though, he was still himself, and still looked at everything with his analytical mind and his kind heart.
 

And then, this week, it all went downhill. The doctor says there aren't too many hours left. 
 

-
 

I am so thankful for the chance to say goodbye, and so angry at the injustice that robbed you of your time. I just wish that I had more time with you. That your wife had more time with you. That my children would get to know their uncle Patrick. I just wish that the world had more time with you.