Vera Sytch's Posts
Remembering Alex
The call came at 3:30 AM.
"Vera, pray... Alex had a very bad accident. They have to do surgery on his head and he has only 50% chance of surviving..."
My brother Alex was on vacation in Kansas City at a motorcycle rally in September, but the accident wasn't a motorcycle crash; a golf cart hit him while he was walking on the rally grounds. He landed on his head from the impact. He never regained consciousness...
Alex Elyjiw was one of five children, the middle child with two older sisters who bossed him around, and two younger brothers whom he bossed around. I was the oldest, so I knew Alex his entire life. It wasn't always fun having to look after younger siblings, so at the cottage where we vacationed, I once tried to lose him in the woods. As he got older, Alex became more interesting company, so I sought his companionship. We backpacked together in the Shenandoah Mountains, skied at Mt. Tremblont, or drove up to Toronto, where we were both born, to visit friends and family. Then for many years, we lived in different cities, and I didn't see Alex very often at all.
In the last seven years, however, we saw more of each other than any time since our childhoods. That's because Alex came to work for TKM (Technical Knowledge Management) at Kodak three months after that department hired me. He was multimedia graphic designer; I am a writer. Alex used to walk by my cubicle every day on the way to the coffeepot. Inevitably, he would stop by to chat. It felt special to have my brother working with me at Kodak. And when the tragic news of his death came, my coworkers were also in shock. I had lost a brother; they had lost a friend.
In that frenzy of activity before the funeral when family members divide up tasks, I volunteered to handle the photographs for a display and a slide show of Alex's life. Our family scrambled to gather photos depicting a lifetime of events: growing up in Toronto, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Rochester; a vagabond life of skiing and odd jobs; time in the Coast Guard; and then his more settled adult years here in Rochester.
My father was an avid photographer who recorded much of our childhoods on Ektachrome slide film. I had some slides digitized at a local photo store and was stunned to see how well these slides withstood the test of time. The old prints didn't hold up quite as well. Click through the slide below and see for yourself.
My coworkers were enormously supportive and helpful during this very difficult time, making enlargements of Alex for display, creating two huge posters of pictures from his life, and delivering these to me at home. They even brought our family meals and cleaned up Alex's yard after a windstorm left behind many broken branches.
I can't communicate a lifetime of memories in one post, but I say this: Alex touched people. His exuberance was contagious, his love of people apparent.
Some people come into our lives and quietly go. Others stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never the same.
- Bob Stewart
"Vera, pray... Alex had a very bad accident. They have to do surgery on his head and he has only 50% chance of surviving..."
My brother Alex was on vacation in Kansas City at a motorcycle rally in September, but the accident wasn't a motorcycle crash; a golf cart hit him while he was walking on the rally grounds. He landed on his head from the impact. He never regained consciousness...
Alex Elyjiw was one of five children, the middle child with two older sisters who bossed him around, and two younger brothers whom he bossed around. I was the oldest, so I knew Alex his entire life. It wasn't always fun having to look after younger siblings, so at the cottage where we vacationed, I once tried to lose him in the woods. As he got older, Alex became more interesting company, so I sought his companionship. We backpacked together in the Shenandoah Mountains, skied at Mt. Tremblont, or drove up to Toronto, where we were both born, to visit friends and family. Then for many years, we lived in different cities, and I didn't see Alex very often at all.
In the last seven years, however, we saw more of each other than any time since our childhoods. That's because Alex came to work for TKM (Technical Knowledge Management) at Kodak three months after that department hired me. He was multimedia graphic designer; I am a writer. Alex used to walk by my cubicle every day on the way to the coffeepot. Inevitably, he would stop by to chat. It felt special to have my brother working with me at Kodak. And when the tragic news of his death came, my coworkers were also in shock. I had lost a brother; they had lost a friend.
In that frenzy of activity before the funeral when family members divide up tasks, I volunteered to handle the photographs for a display and a slide show of Alex's life. Our family scrambled to gather photos depicting a lifetime of events: growing up in Toronto, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Rochester; a vagabond life of skiing and odd jobs; time in the Coast Guard; and then his more settled adult years here in Rochester.
My father was an avid photographer who recorded much of our childhoods on Ektachrome slide film. I had some slides digitized at a local photo store and was stunned to see how well these slides withstood the test of time. The old prints didn't hold up quite as well. Click through the slide below and see for yourself.
My coworkers were enormously supportive and helpful during this very difficult time, making enlargements of Alex for display, creating two huge posters of pictures from his life, and delivering these to me at home. They even brought our family meals and cleaned up Alex's yard after a windstorm left behind many broken branches.
I can't communicate a lifetime of memories in one post, but I say this: Alex touched people. His exuberance was contagious, his love of people apparent.
Some people come into our lives and quietly go. Others stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never the same.
- Bob Stewart
