Monday, February 28, 2005

Goodbye Eric Heape

Eric was a great person, and my friend for many years. He cared a lot about animals, and was getting his Ph.D. in Charleston in neuropharmacology. I'll miss him. Since he died, I've been remembering all the things we did over the years. All those moments in time. I remember the summer that we and Tom Stec spent in Columbia, renting out the second floor of an old farm house. I remember the fireflys in the back yard in the evening, and walking around the neighborhood at dusk, and drinking a lot with good friends. I remember driving with him in the old Escort up to Clemson on the weekends to see Shelley and Dave and Bill. And our suite at Governor's school with Dave and Pete, so many years ago, and sneaking off campus with everyone at night to go swimming in the cold lake in the spring. Just slowly fading memories in my mind now. Maybe not. Perhaps the entirety of spacetime does exist, and those events are still taking place, always have, always will be. Just arrangements of atoms. Perhaps the evolution of quantum states is indeed unitary, and thus all permutations of atoms exist, and so Eric is still alive, just somewhere else - very, very far away in another branch of the universal wave function. Still, all of those possibilities are very distant from the here and now, from these atoms at this point in time, me sitting here and writing this. But then this moment will drift away too. So I smile at my future self who will read this at some point in the future, and I know he will smile back, and we will both miss Eric. Such is existence.


Comments:
Found this on Google. Did Dave make this happen? Thanks Travis:)
- Tom
 
I knew Eric. He was an amazing person and I miss him dearly.
 
our son paul was a good friend of eric's (years ago when we lived in SC) and at one point was seriously considering attending governor's school with eric. paul is now an architect, living in phoenix. i remember taking paul and eric to a science fair competition in columbia. am so saddened to hear eric has left this earth. remarkable young man with a remarkable heart and brain. pam
 
I was fortunate to have known Eric for several years in middle school and as a freshman in high school. He was one of the most unique people I've ever known, with a great mind and amazing character. I've just been reading through letters he'd written during those years after I moved from SC, and feel incredibly saddened that he's no longer here to bring good to this world. We miss you, Eric, and you will be remembered. -Paul Goldammer
 
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