12.07.06
Posted in Memories at 12:23 pm by JudiMom
The first or second year on Everest Drive Lucas was old enough to spend lots of time outside with the neighboorhood boys in trees, on bikes, playing football, etc. In allof their tree climbing they discovered that the old trees out back grew mistletoe. Lucas came in one day and said he was going to sell mistletoe at the corner of Evereset and Fieldcrest. He climb up the trees, scooched out the limbs and knock several bunches of mistletoe. He made a big sign out of poster board… “Miseltoe 5 dollars a bunch.” It was Christmas time so it made sense to me …. it was pretty cold that day but not tooooo bad. He stood on the corner for about 3 hours waving to all that drove by…. trying to entice someone to stop and purchase his misletoe. He did not sell a single bunch. I guess he felt bad that he had picked all this mistletoe and it was going to go to waste so he came home…. took his marker and crossed out 5 dollars and wrote FREE under it and went back out to the corner…..all without help from me.
He came home in about an hour….. no misletoe…. and I said “Congratulations, how much did you make?” He said ” 15 dollars” , I said ” WOW, that was more than I expected you to make, good job!!!” He said “Well, actually I couldn’t sell any of it… but when I tried to give it away everybody wanted some but then they felt guilty and gave me a donation.”
I love to think of Lucas that day…. so full of life and love… as put up my xmas decortaions this week…. I noticed a little clump of misletoe in my river birch tree……never been there before this year… so I’m hoping it is Lucas sending me a Christmas kiss and hug… thanks for the mistletoe Lucas, thanks for the kisses and hugs.
I found this photo at Grandmother’s. She added the caption whichs adds a few more facts to the story. I miss you, Lucas. I think of you everyday. love mom
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09.26.06
Posted in Memories at 6:03 pm by JudiMom
Fall means football in Alabama. Fall means Auburn Football to the Harris family. The years Lucas was at Auburn were special to Jerry and I because we could come to the football game and see Lucas at the same time. Lucas lived in the “castle” the first year at Auburn. It was a large house and four boys lived there together. Lucas, Travis Harris, Jake McMillian, and Scott Bowen. Jerry and I would park there and the boys would all be gone already because they were pledges and had to go to whatever frat house they had to take care of that day. It was always the highlight of the game for me to see Lucas climbing up the staris to visit with us dressed in his coat and tie and a date for the game. That fall passed quickly… and the next year or two later Lucas lived in the Dubose apartments close to Alan and then the “shack”. Some where in there he and Rachel met and started dating. Rachel then moved into the second “shack”. Lucas built “his deck” in front of Rachel’s little house and it was the place to hang out for Auburn Football for the Harris family. One day Jerry and I drove up and as we were unloading all the coolers, chairs, and food we brought to the game I spotted a bunch of red blooms behind the third empty shack. I had always wanted some of these little red flowers. They spring up in the fall all over the country roads of Alabama but no one could ever tell me the name of them or where to buy the bulbs…. well anyway I had a fit and just had to dig some of them up….. Lucas and Rachel found a shovel and they both helped dig up every last one of those little red flowers.
I brought them home an planted them in our rose garden…. they grew in amazing numbers and I started thinking of where to transplant them too and how to make them grow. I dug them up (the bulbs) and stored them in the garage. We had planted a hill with azaleas and I wanted a pathway made at the bottom of the hill…. so I went and bought a bunch of landscape timbers and got Lucas to put them out to create a pathway for me that kinda connects to the next door neighbors path….. I never could get anyone to replant the bulbs for me. Last Janurary …. wondering around the garage… I found the bulbs and made a day out of planting them along Lucas’ little pathway and then I took some to Rachel’s house in Montgomery…. I then decided that since I didn’t know their names that I would call them “Lucas Suprise” so I would always think about him when they popped up suddenly in the fall…. and here they are…thanks Lucas… i love you.
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08.31.06
Posted in Memories at 5:26 pm by JudiMom
Lucas being the youngest of four must have sometimes felt like he got the hand-me-downs for his whole life. He never minded that and was always glad to get stuff from older brothers and sister. In reality he got more one-0n-one attention the last four years of high school 3 at STJ and one at L’ville from Jerry and I than he could stand because he was the only child left at home by then.
I had time to make a picture dedication in the STJ year book to him…. as shown above… as I tried to make him feel special even though he was the youngest.. And we went to every single L’ville football game the year he was there… I remember thinking… “Poor Lucas thought he was getting away from mom and dad this year” and we would show up every weekend for the football game…
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08.23.06
Posted in Memories at 11:17 am by tara
I remember going to the Galleria for the day in 5th grade with Lucas and Summer Weaver. We had so much fun. The three of us went to the pet store to look around, and Lucas decided it would be a good idea to buy a little white mouse. So they sold a 10 year old child a mouse in a little cardboard house. We were so excited, until the truth set in. Lucas said, “What was I thinking? My parents won’t let me have a mouse.” Now, all of a sudden, we were in a predicament~ pet stores don’t take mice back. “Oh, no!” We thought. I think the pet store employees felt bad for us, so they decided that he could return it, but just not get his money back. Good enough for us, and the parents were none the wiser.
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08.02.06
Posted in Memories at 12:40 pm by Tarlie Harris
Over the past year I have had many, many dreams of Lucas. Some give me peace and some border on nightmarish. But on the whole, I feel lucky to have gotten many warm hugs, big smiles and I love yous from Lucas in my sleep.
One dream in particular has had a profound effect on me. Last October, as I lay sleeping in Gabe’s guest room with my mom in the bed with me, Lucas came to me. He was smiling and silly and so completely himself. After the big hugs and I miss yous, I asked him if he regretted his decision to leave us, and he said that yes, he did. But he just had that old Lucas attitude of well, yea, but that is the way things are now. I guess what I mean is that he didn’t say it in a rueful way and I didn’t get an sense of sadness from his answer that way you might expect. Then I took him to this room to show him all the things that I was keeping to remind me of him. I showed him various things like his nite-nite that he nodded at in acceptance and then I got to this wooden hand that went up to the mid-forearm. I told him that this reminded me of him. Now, in my psyche, I know what this hand represents, so let me explain. I read this book several years ago called “I Know this Much is True” where the author’s twin brother was in and out of mental hospitals for schizophrenia and at one point he chopped his right hand off at the mid-forearm. So I feel sure that this is where this symbol came from in my dream. When I showed Lucas the hand, he was adamantly against me keeping this hand in the room. It was the only time in the dream where he had a serious, straight face on. He said, no, you can’t keep this in here because I am not broken.
I awoke from this dream with such a sense of peace and a sense of what the human soul means to me, and I guess to Lucas, because I feel like the idea came partly from him. The idea that all people are connected, alive and dead, and that in itself is the Divine. And that Lucas is not, in fact, broken. I carry him with me every minute of every day and I have to remember to look inside myself for Lucas when the sadness is overwhelming and see that he is in there, complete, even though at the same time he is beyond my reach when I am awake. But not, thankfully, in my dreams.
As this year has passed, sometimes it has been very hard to have the total faith in that dream that I woke with that October morning, but I try. And I constantly look forward to more dreams to come that will give me the same fleeting glimpse of understanding that that dream gave me.
I hope that maybe some of you have had a similar experience over the past year. Or if not, that the beauty of my experience can somewhat be passed on to you, even though I know that you all would like a big Lucas hug and grin all for yourself.
If you think this is completely nutty, I understand, but I have to tell you that Lucas rarely has a shirt on in my dreams, he seems to be constantly hanging around in khaki shorts alone, so that has to give you some idea of how realistic these dreams really are!
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Posted in Memories at 10:49 am by rdurden
You & your family are in my thoughts & prayers today.
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07.23.06
Posted in Memories at 3:52 pm by JudiMom
When Lucas got older he, of course, would follow Chance and Gabe into the woods for long summer days of fort building, cowboys and indians, creek wading but until he could keep up with them he played in the backyard with the hose. The hose ran every day until there was a creek in our back yard. It down too the fence and over to the tree house. I can remember going in to get the camera as he called me out the door one afternoon and wanted help washing his wagon. I knew that his cute blonde hair was soon going to disappear and he would be growing up fast. This is my most favorite picture of Lucas in the whole world….
And sure enough next year at the pool you can see his blonde hair is mostly gone and he is growing up fast….
We made a family trip to Callao… and annapolis in 1987…. he caught a crab…
We moved to Everest Drive in Montgomery and he played golf one summer in the Capital City Junior League…
but I remember the summer Gabe went to kicking camp at UTC in Chattanooga. It was a four day camp— Lucas and I took Gabe and left him there and we spent the days in Chattanooga…..I don’t think grandmother and PopPaw were there. I don’t have a picture of our time together but we went hiking.
Just– Lucas and I went up Lookout Mountain and walked all the way around it and back up to the road . Lucas knew exactly where he was going and I kept saying “we need to turn around and go back we are lost….” “Nooooo, mom, I know where we are just keep up with me and he would run off… I had sandles on and could not run.”
We walked for at least four hours up and down, across a river, and to the other side of the brow and then up to the road where we left the car. I know I was so proud to see Lucas knew exactly where he was and he turned to me and said “SEEE I told you we could get there…!!!” He had so much fun we went back the next day and did the same exactly thing but this time I had on tennis shoes and I trusted him to lead me …
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07.07.06
Posted in Memories at 1:47 pm by Tarlie Harris
As the younger siblings at both Chance and Gabe’s weddings, Lucas and I had a lot of fun.
For Chance’s wedding in Austin, Lucas got in much later than he was supposed to because he was flying in from NJ and had gotten in the habit of giving up his plane seat whenever they asked for volunteers. He took a cab straight from the airport to the bar where we were at, which caused a huge ruckus, since dad had gone to the airport (without hearing from him) to look for him. But he shows up at the bar no problem, which was so him, noone even remembered telling him the name of the place we were going to be. I think he was like, well I knew downtown wasn’t that big. It was so fun that we got to be in the wedding together, walking each other up the aisle after the ceremony. I can still remember our big grins the whole time. They had a celtic band playing, which I gotta say, was difficult to dance to, but Lucas found a way. My favorite part of the weekend was the end of the wedding night, Lucas and I went back to our hotel room and hung out with Rob and Natasha. David Berry had already been asleep in our room, I guess we told him to stay in our room (?), and I just remember us waking him up and he was hilarious talking about how Bethany had passed out in the bed next to him and he had no idea what was going on and felt a little awkard (he’s married with kids!) and Bethany wandered out of the room and we just laughed for as long as we could stay up, he was cracking us up! Rob and Natasha finally left to go to sleep at like 4 and we had to leave for the airport at 5. Lucas and I were on the same flight back to Nashville and then he was continuing on to NJ. Rob took us to the airport and we were all completely delerious. Lucas and I checked in and then laid down on the floor of the airport, with my head on his stomach, and slept soundly until our plane took off a couple of hours later. I’m not sure why I remember this so clearly, I guess it was just that there aren’t that many people you can lay down on the airport floor with and go to sleep, but Lucas was one of them for me.
For Gabe’s wedding in Barbados, we once again shared a room. It kind of got to be a joke between us, since were in our 20s and still sharing a room, but neither one of us minded, we just thought it was funny. Of course, we partied hard the first night and the next morning we were supposed to go on the boat cruise. I wake Lucas up and he pops up out of bed and is like, yea, ok i’ll get ready, he gets in the shower and then throws up twice and gets back in bed and is like, yea, i’m not going. So I get up, throw up twice, and am like, ok Luke, I’m heading out, see you later. I’m still not sure that my resolve to go was any better than Lucas staying behind since I spent the entire cruise face down on my stomach trying not to throw up while everyone else drank punch. My favorite memory of Lucas on that trip is during the party after the ceremony. They had these two Caribbean girls in sexy black dresses singing in this conference-like room and at first everyone was like, hmmmm, this might be hard to party to. But after a bit they started singing songs that we knew and Lucas was the first to stand up and dance right in front of them and sing along and try and get everyone all pumped up. So then Dad and I joined him and then everyone else, and I just remember thinking, our family is pretty cool as far as dancing and singing and trying to get people to have a good time goes. And Lucas was always the ring leader.
Here, most people are still sitting and Lucas is up trying to get things going.
And a short while later, everyone is up, and Lucas is in full on dance mode!
Oh, and I almost forgot about the horseback riding. We rode horses on the beach one afternoon, the guide who took us decided that Lucas was totally fine to ride on his own, but that he needed to hold the reins of me and Rob’s horses the whole time, what the hell?! I had definitely ridden more than Lucas, but he had that way about him, and he did do fine. It was a funny ride.
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05.19.06
Posted in Memories at 10:19 am by JudiMom
I received the CD from Lane right after Lucas’s Birthday. I had to wait to listen to it so I could build up my courage.
I drove to Chattanooga about three weeks ago and listened to the whole thing. Surprisingly to me,I did not cry the whole trip. The happy songs made me happy…. being his mother I did not get to “go out” with Lucas an whoop it up. I wish I had now because I know we would have had fun. The funny thing about the songs from his childhood is I remember them being some of my favorites to belt out in the car with the kids or from movies that Lucas, Tarlie and I watched during the summers. “Grease” was one of those movies… i don’t remember what year it was but it came out and I’m sure we recorded it on VHS tape and played it every morning for a whole summer. Tarlie and I would dance and sing around to all the songs… Lucas would too some but I really think he just watch us being silly….but obviously it stayed with him if he loved the John and Oliva version of the “You’re the One that I Want” whoo… whoo whoo.. which is the only way I can say the words…..
I knew “Patches” was one of his favorites as I found the words written out in his papers… and Billy Ki lough his 4 year old teacher wrote me that she can remember him lip sinking patches as a four year old….. amazing to me.
“I’m on Fire” was a song I fell in love with because of the train whistle…I requested that Jerry go get it for me and I played it over and over until I could sing the fast part along with Bruce.
“You’ve Lost that Lovin Feeling” is from my teenage years but I’m sure Lucas learned it from Top Gun…. I loved that movie and it was at the condo to watch over and over….and sing along too.
“When a Man Loves a Woman” was one of the first songs that Jerry and I shared together which I would always turn up to 10 decibels….and sing to.. with “Amazing Grace” and “I saw the Light”.
“Over the Rainbow” was, of course, from the “Wizard of OZ” by Judy Garland whom Pops and YaYa named me after so I always sang it when I heard it but not the version on this CD but i now love this version along with the original…
and by the way I CANNOT sing or carry a tune solo but if someone is there to sing with me I can (sometimes) follow the tune…. so I like to think that Lucas learned it did not matter if you went off key while singing it was the enthusiasm and meaning that was important…. similar to cheering at the top of your lungs… to let all those out there hear that you love them….
so Lucas I hope you could hear me singing along with some our shared songs.. at the top of my lungs and out of tune and wishing you were still here for me to sing with. I miss you and think of you every day.. love mom.
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04.14.06
Posted in Memories at 9:19 pm by Tarlie Harris
Lucas would never hesitate to come and meet me whenever I was within driving distance of him. This usually meant Destin if I wasn’t in Birmingham, although I got him to drive over to Atlanta or Athens a few times too. I could just call him up and say, listen, I will be wherever in a few days (usually a good couple of hours driving from him) and he would say, ok, i’ll see you there.
Three summers ago was one of my favorite trips to Destin. Rob and I went down for a week and convinced Chance and Jen and Seph to come too. Then of course, we got Lucas to come on down, even though Chance made him leave the dogs in Auburn. We hired a guy to take us sailing one afternoon for Rob’s birthday and treated Lucas and Rachel and Lane to ride along with us while Chance and crew stayed behind. It was a great day – we drank about 2 cases of budweiser on the three hour boat ride, jumped in every time we got hot or needed to pee, and Lucas chatted up our captain, Brian, while Brian did a little fishing. When we got back, we got more beer and hit the beach for a few hours until sunset listening to music, talking and playing with Seph.
All of us on the boat
Our captain Brian was fishing since the rest of us really didn’t want to do anything other than sit there and drink. But once he caught a big fish, Lucas started getting interested. He went over and we took this picture while he pretended to be proud of his big catch (that Brian had caught).
The next summer, Rob and I planned our trip down to Destin again, but this time we thought maybe we should spend some time alone since we had never actually been down there just the two of us. But as the time for us to go down there came closer, I couldn’t stop myself from letting Lucas know we would be there so that he could come for just a few days on the weekend. Well, as it turned out Rob proposed on the beach the first day we were there, which was a big surprise for me. We had been back from the beach (now engaged) for about 30 minutes when Lucas called and said, we will be there in about 20 minutes. Now, we had never discussed exactly when he would be coming, but it seemed that Lucas had decided to come on the first weekend. It was pretty funny. When I told him we got engaged and showed him the ring and everything, I could tell he felt a little bad they had come down. But I specifically remember thinking, well who cares, Rob and I will have plenty of time alone and I was happy to have Lucas be a part of that day and I knew he had made a big effort to get down there. So we ordered pizza from Mellow Mushroom and settled into life Destin style with a movie. We also decided to go sailing again. We found the same guy to take us and this time Megan and Wes came with us too. It was a great repeat performance and we had started a summer tradition.
Even before we had the condo, our parents took us to Destin every summer for as long as I can remember. There were several summers when dad organized a deep sea fishing trip for the whole family to go on. This is after one of the trips, where we got to pose with our whole catch. Summer of 1995, me, Gabe, Lucas and John.
Another trip years earlier, Chance and Lucas getting down to business.
And even earlier, we were too little for the big trips then, but I think we would go down to the docks to see all the catches being brought in. Gabe and Lucas.
The year we finally nagged mom enough to take us to Big Kahunas.
Summer of 2000, Lucas in our condo posing silly.
Hmmm…me and Lucas, I would guess around summer 1990, when we still actually played on the beach.
We got the same house on Noreigo Drive on the bayside for a few years. This summer dad got us a windsurfer. Lucas was actually pretty good. This picture is off of the deck of that house of Lucas windsurfing. I couldn’t find pictures of the summer that we got a jet ski for the summer at this same house. That was a blast too. We could dock it right at the back of the house. Needless to say, Lucas LOVED that.
I have so many memories of beach time with Lucas and I know that it was one of his favorite places, as it is mine.
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