For Greg

We are all sending our good thoughts and strength to you Greg.

Greg! Our beloved Greg!

Dearest friends and family, who have been so incredibly supportive in an unbelievably difficult time:

I am devastated to say that, after 13 days of fighting for his life, we have lost the battle: Greg Sewell went into cardiac arrest at 12:10pm today and died within minutes.

Words really cannot express what we're all experiencing at this moment. Please hold us --especially Frankie, Greg's wife -- in your loving thoughts and prayers. We are all in shock.

Greg, thank you for staying with us for as long as you did. Come visit us sometimes. And don't forget to tell us how great it is wherever you are -- it might help us make sense of why you had to leave so soon.

We love you, Greg.

greg

Hello there
I'm a friend of Jill Riley and Kathleen Olmstead in Toronto.
They both sent me some info on Greg, and the condition he is in, and
just wanted to send this email and all the positive energy I can
muster.
It sounds like Greg is an awesome person, and very wonderful friend,
and I just want to extend many many heartfelt virtual hugs to a
complete stranger, as I know everyone everywhere deserves the power of
a hug.
As cheesy as it sounds, its the best thing for the soul!
Take much care, and I will keep thinking positive thoughts for Greg and
all of my friends of friends in brooklyn.

:)

Dear Greg...

...you don't know us, but you are certainly on our minds - we are friends of your friends, and we understand that you are in need of all the positive thoughts and love that you can get right now.

 

We'd like you to know that there is an incredible number of people who love you and need you to be strong and get better. Just the amount of love in the notes that we've seen tell us that you are a wonderful person, and we'd really, really like to meet you someday. So please stick around.

 

We are sending healing vibes and prayers your way right now, and we won't stop until they reach you.

 

Know that your are truly and deeply loved.

 

Your friends,

 

Kelley and Andre

HK is routing for you

Hey Greg, Hello from Hong Kong! I wanted to make sure you know that there are a few billion people in the eastern hemisphere routing for you too. Just to give you a sense of the depth of support, I took a little stroll around my neighborhood this morning and took these photos. As you'll see, almost everyone I bumped into—my dry cleaner, the guy at Starbucks, and even the asshole who owns the dumpling shop on my corner (a.k.a. the dumping nazi)---asked me to send along their love and support. Seriously, you're bigger than Yao Ming over here. However, I also stopped by the Chinese temple behind my apartment, and frankly, some of the idols and statues there seemed pretty pissed. They've definitely have had enough of these "I'm so sick and weak" shenanigans and they really want you to get your ass out of bed. But they also reassured me that they've got a lot of the Eastern deities—Buddha and his homies ---working on your case and sending good qi, karma etc. your way. Tonight I'm going out for drinks with the Hong Kong curling team. I'll let you know if they have anything more to add. Love, Jane

Hang in there!

Hi Greg,
When I think of you, I have two vivid memories. The first is of you in a dark bar, in the middle of the night, dancing up a storm, wearing an ugly shirt. Though I think that's probably a combination of hundred nights swimming together from back in the day.
The second is of a night at the Jersey Shore (no, I'm not quite sure what either of us was doing there) when you and I were part of a splinter group that headed down to the beach, also in the middle of the night (you may or may not have been wearing an ugly shirt--that I don't remember). Anyway, I didn't realize when I took off with you guys that you were planning to go swimming at the beach. Did I mention it was the middle of the night? Anyway, we get to the beach, you strip down to your skivvies, and off you flee into the black abyss of sky and water. "Oh no! What is he doing?! Is he out of his mind? Will he be okay?" I panicked, as I watched parts of you flop and flail in the waves. Friends of yours who knew you much better than I did just laughed. "Oh, Greg will be okay. He's gotten himself into and out of much worse than this!" And so that's what I think of now.
Pull through, Greg. I know you can ride it out and I know you'll be just fine.
You and Frankie are in my thoughts and prayers.
With much love,
Francine

Greg,

 

There’s a yellow Vespa in Accra, Ghana with your name all over it.   OK, so it has a coat of red busyinternet paint all over it now, and it has a few dents and bruises, but it’s still your VESPA and we want to see you riding it again one day back here.  We’re thinking of you, and hoping very much that you hang in there, and get better soon. Best wishes from Mark, Chris, Divine, Estelle and the team in Ghana.

 

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mark Davies  +233 244 366969  GHANA

www.tradenet.biz   |   www.busyinternet.com   |   www.openmarkets.org

 

message for Greg

hi Carrie --

I'm a friend of Frances. Our mutual friend Danielle gave me the info for sending a message, which is below.

All love,

CAAF

Dear Greg,

We've never met, and yet I want so very much for you to get better!

I met Frances two years ago at Danielle and Andy's wedding. It was a joyful occasion, and Frances and I made friends in two seconds flat at the rehearsal dinner, which is, I think, the fastest I've ever made friends with anyone since kindergarten. Then, as you will remember, Frances set off last summer to Martha's Vineyard and we played at the seashore with Danielle. You were mentioned many, many times that weekend. I have heard so many stories about you, Greg. I know how dry and funny and smart you are, how good you are, the great affection you inspire in your friends, and how very much Frances loves you.

So it may seem strange to say, but yesterday afternoon I was thinking of you two. I was at the library, a very Frances place, and my thoughts flitted ahead to how I might get to see her in New York later this year and how that might be an opportunity to finally meet you, too, and how nice that would be. It was soon after this that Danielle called to tell me how ill you are.

My good thoughts are with you, Greg, and with the family and friends who are so worried about you. I am sending you strength and will to draw on. Hang on, come back, rest and be well again. There are so many people who love you -- and so many more waiting to know you.

Love,

Carrie Frye

a little TOO convenient

Well Greg, apparently the DaVinci Code threat didn't work. I'm a bit surprised. I figured the thought of Dan Brown going ad infinitum in your ear would make you jump up like a daffodil in springtime!

Think I've sussed your little scam though!

Let's take a little stroll down memory lane, shall we? This time last year. Somewhere in the middle east, surrounded by arabs with their rakishly adjusted headwear. Me with my mojitio, you with your overpriced champagne cocktail. "Gotta enjoy the good things in life" you said. (I have my doubts that being fed through a tube counts as a good thing, i may add!) I was doing my best to avoid attracting too much attention to the flood of tears streaming down my face. I'd heard while I was at the airport that Allen had taken a turn for the worse. His white cells were falling, infection was increasing and he was no longer responding to his antibiotics. His lungs were failing and they had to put him back on the breathing tube. I was a complete and utter mess, you were calm and comforting.

You told me how proud you were of me for standing by him during his illness You said how lucky he was to be surrounded by family and friends like me. You assured me that he could feel the love and support around him.

So it all seems a little TOO convenient that a year later you are now in the same situation!!! The jig is up Mister! I know you are just in this for the attention! Well you've got it! Everyone is suitably freaked out. You've got people from all over the world focusing all their good thoughts and positive energy on you. You have a blushing bride who could probably REALLY use a good night sleep in her own house, in her own bed with her own husband. You can now get away with anything short of murder and all people will say is 'Oh well, I'm just glad he's alive' for at least the next 5-10 years! Buck up, cowboy, snap out of it! You've milked it for all it's worth, time to go home now. Time to get back to the all the 'good things in life'

K?

Love you

Laura xxx

Sending you lots of love, Greg

Dear Greg,

As I told Frances today, I am looking forward to the look of wry bewilderment pass over your face sometime in the near future when I tell you that today I held your hand and whispered a few sweet nothings to you. I also relish the possibility of sending in the Wau Wau Sisters, resplendent in clown-porn mufti, with flowers and a song-a-gram of dubious taste as soon as you are sitting up in bed and ready to grin your full grin.

Get better, luvvie. You are young and strong and have so may many people who love you dearly. Frances loves and misses you so much. I am sending you as much power as I can to stay strong, let yourself rest and heal, rest and heal until you are ready for the next step. But get back here for the wonderful days you have waiting for you once you are through this terrible thing.

I am picturing you and Frances coming to visit us in the summer. Frances and I drag you and Andy to one yickety place after another--dusty bookstores, ridiculous teashops. At the end of the day we go to the beach and you dive into the ocean and go under and come up cold and wet, shivering and laughing and laughing.

Much, much love, Greg,

Danielle

The World Cup is a few months away...

Greg, Matthew and I are thinking of you constantly. We know how tired you must be, but: take your energy from all of the people who love you and need you to get well. And Greg, the World Cup qualifying matches are only a couple of months away. England drew a pretty good group. Have you been following it? I figure Croatia will be the big competition, but maybe 2010 will be the year England doesn't embarrass themselves. I'll make you a deal: you get better, and the beers for the first England match are on me. And I won't argue with you about dentists.

I've been praying for you, Greg, and I'll keep praying. There are candles burning for you in London and there will be as long as we wait for good news.

Love, Molly

Greg: Special Delivery

Greg, sweetie,

Yeah. Listen. About this whole "sickness" thing you've got going on. Nobody likes it. Seriously. You gotta cut it out. That's enough now.

And when you get well enough, we'll tell you all the crazy things we've been doing in your honour while you've been "out." Like a few days ago, I went to Le Notre and ordered an Orange Mechanic because it reminds me of you. And also because, as you know, the word "mechanic" always makes me a little hot. 

Admittedly, it isn't my favourite drink. But I drank it for you, baby. All for you. And as I did, I imagined that it wasn't me drinking it, but you. And that as it moved from your mouth to your throat, down to your stomach, it was taking with you all the healing energy of all the sunshine in all the land.

Indeed, I've been sending you all kinds of healing energy. And not just in the abstract. I am really quite specific about it all. I've developed the kind of process that only those who are both distraught and unemployed can come up with. It involves a very clear mental image I have of you lying in the sun at the Ritz (getting progressively pinker, as I recall). I summon up that image, and then I turn my hands into two of those really cool showerheads that "rain" the water down. And muster all the white light I can from within me, and from all over the Universe, and I rain it all over you, baby. Slowly, deliberately, starting from your head and moving all the way down your body until I get to your toes.

And then when I am finished with that, I tuck into your chest cavity and give a special bath to your lungs, imagining that I am delicately massaging them with white light until they are healthy and happy and pink.

In my mind, when I am done, there is a slight smile on your lips over there in your hospital bed.

Val thinks I am crazy. But even though you are out cold, I see that you are sending me stuff back. Thanks to you, I've started practicing yoga again. It had been about 10 months. But I could see as soon as I started with this rainshower business that I needed to summon a great deal of concentration, and I could only think of one way of getting there. So I took my dusty mat out of the corner.

I needed a reason to go back. And you gave me the most compelling one I can imagine. I feel a bit like you are saving me, lamb. And I hope that I can help do the same for you.

Keep up your antennae up. There are special deliveries of love and strength and wellness coming your way. Everybody is working on making you better. You don't have to do this alone.

Let's lick this thing, shall we? And then…then there will be dancing.

I love you,

Sandra "Boom-Boom" Kahale

A web of love for Greg

Greg,
I don't know you, but you're my fellow human being, and dearly
beloved of my friend, Carrie. Do I need to tell you how precious life
is? I think not, as you are fighting for it with such tenacity. Do I
need to tell you how many people love you, and how much? Surely you
can see that. The love of those closest to you has extended to form a
giant web, pulling in me and others who haven't even met you. The
love is very powerful, it surrounds you and it asks you to keep on
living. The world would be poorer without you, and you have more
living yet to do.

So come back to us, don't go away. You will make many people deeply
happy. Come back, and maybe I'll get to meet you one day. Come back
and play and live and love more.

We are all pulling for you.

With Love,
Anne

Gregory, my dearest friend

I have been talking to you all day long in my head, now it's time to put a few thoughts down here for someone to share with you. That someone better have a nice calm reading voice because there's a whack of messages here for you, all posted over the last day or two. I am going to thank all those who've posted because I know it is comforting to all of us who are in need and it is making a difference. I am so glad to know how many people out there in the stratosphere understand how just special you are and how much we need you with us. 

Greg, you'll have to forgive me if I can't be witty and wry. I know you love me anyway even though witty banter is not my strongest attribute, especially when I'm just the teensiest bit terrified. I'm here to represent the "I've known and loved Greg for many years and he's an intimate part of my very being" crowd. We've been a bit silent on this blog, mainly because many of us are holding vigil at your side, and anyway we are busy working hard to embrace hope and quell our fear.

I don't have to tell you what you mean to me, dear sir. You know already, and I spent an afternoon recently reminding you of every possible detail of our friendship that I could remember. It took a long time and had us on adventures in several continents, to beaches and mountains and concerts and many too many seedy bars to list… You can thank Clive for that trip, by the way, since he had just told me about some study he'd read about the effects of memory-sharing on the brain activity of unconscious people.

Of course it would be Clive who could walk into this situation with a waft of obscure knowledge that he enthusiastically pulls out of his mental pocket at the right time. And speaking of him, I want to let you know, he and your brothers are doing a good job managing all the somewhat alarming medical information and parceling it out carefully where it's needed. He's processing what this strange turn of events means to him, and he's been very brave about pouring his heart out to a few of us while trying to make sense of it all. It's quite impressive really. But Greg, you know, he is someone else who really truly needs you. Kirsten called it a "bromance" between you two which made me chuckle. 

You are entirely irreplaceable to all of us in the Team Greg – Old School Division (and to many many others) my dear boy and we need you to wake up so we can tell you more about it. I'm sending out all the light and love to you my rusty old heart can produce. Hang in friend. 

Elena

(and the next post is from me too, I just got a bit weepy at the end and forgot to add my name)

 

Get back here, Mr. Sewell!

Dear Greg,

It's Elise Vogel here. I'm pretty sure the last time I saw you was a
year and a half ago in the fall, I think; I was sitting on a bench in
the ball field at the corner of Houston and Sixth Avenue watching my
friends' kids run around after school; it was a lovely afternoon. You
were walking west along Houston and stopped and gave me a quizzical
look through the chain link fence and asked me what the hell I was
doing there.

So, now it's my turn: What the hell are you doing there?

Remember the margarita party we had in the office back at the old B&N
office? I brought the harvest gold Osterizer blender from the beach
house into the city; The Captain and I set up the bar on what would
one day be Leighton's desk; Mark Haggarty and Jamie Barnett made
appetizers called "Heavenly Mallets" -- marshmallows on toothpicks!
-- and we all drank and laughed and built a weird, wonderful family
out of the brilliant bunch of people that made up the early days of
bn.com. We all were so incredibly lucky to have been thrown together
in that weird little maze of carpeted cubicles! Now we all seem to
be gathered again -- here, for you, demanding that you get your butt
back to us so we can throw you party. All you have to do is show up!
I'll bring the blender.

Sure, you and I have been a long time out of touch, but I'm telling
you right now that we need you here. Please get better. I'll be
thinking of you and praying.

Love, Elise xo

Carrots and showtunes

Hi again Greg, 

Leo happened upon a book tucked away in the backseat today. It's called The Carrot Seed and I thought it might be a good one to share with you. Its colour scheme is mostly yellow, and that's the sunny colour I associate most with you. It's about a boy who just keeps believing in what he can do when everyone else says he can't. In the end he gets a giant carrot that's strangely pinkish in colour (so it must be a very special heritage variety and will probably win him 1^st place at the NITTYGRITTY-BRAMACHINGWINGDING or whatever that particular highlight of the Bramalea social calendar is called).

 Here's the text. You kind of have to picture whimsical drawings of a determined little boy in overalls to go with it.

A little boy planted a carrot seed.

His mother said, "I'm afraid it won't come up."

His father said, "I'm afraid it won't come up."

And his big brother said, "It won't come up."

Every day the little boy pulled up the weeds around the seed and sprinkled the ground with water. But nothing came up.

And nothing came up.

Everyone kept saying it wouldn't come up.

But he still pulled up the weeds around it every day and sprinkled the ground with water.

And then, one day,

A carrot came up,

Just as the little boy had known it would.

 

Ok, so that's a little story from Leo for you.... I read him Olivia tonight and we dedicated it to you. By the way, he wants you to know that "a night train is one that picks up the people waiting at the station at night" and that "a lamppost is a lamp that you sit on". 

Greg, everywhere I go, I hear ridiculous songs that you have belted out at one time or another, particularly in the morning. I hope someone manages to tune your radio to an appropriate station (I couldn't get the reception), or maybe brings in some Bonnie Tyler, Pat Benatar, Sinead, Madonna or old showtunes. 

I remembered a story you told me about a long train ride in Europe, back before we even met. The train was packed and you had to stand for hours. To pass the time you concentrated on trying to remember all the lyrics to Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light. And you can probably still recite them. (Of course we also once attempted this as an ill-fated karaoke duet at the old Gladstone but enough about that evening!). 

I think that you should try this trick now to help get you through this uncomfortable and challenging situation. Pick a great ballad and concentrate, I know you'll get through it and finally remember all the words. I am waiting here with baited breath to find out what you pick and hear you sing it start to finish.

I love you Greg.