John Lafferty

A few final things I need to say to our friend, Wallace. I figured this would be as good a time as any if you guys can hang in there with me for about 3 and ½ minutes. Hopefully the words come out right and I don’t sound like too big of an idiot!

Wallace, your life was intricately woven together with the lives of all your loving friends and family like the steadfast strands of steel spliced into the cables on the lifts we ride together every day. The cable is frayed now and many are surely scared to go on riding the lift. But the snowflakes will continue to fall in threes and the brave will still trust our cable to carry them to the top of life’s mountains. The thought of shredding without you takes my breath away and fills bucket after bucket with the kind of tears that we laughed about matching our tight pants. So instead of charging on without you, we will keep you with us on top of every line, at the peak of every backswing, and most importantly at the center of every smile.

Your life was as diverse and amazing as every fleck of flying snow you would send blasting into the air during a mach 6 pow slash. You woke up every day and sent it. Unfortunately, when you live life the way we did, sometimes it ends as quickly as the best run of your life. Every run I shared with you was the best run of my life, and there is nothing I will miss more than your smile standing across from me at the foot of a hill—except maybe your jeans or those white high-tops that you scored at TJ Maxx.

So here I am, sitting in the driver’s seat, awkwardly pulled over for the 5th time in 24 hours, unable to fathom looking through the tears and past my blinking hazard lights for fear of seeing a world without you in it. The void beyond the bubble of my Nissan’s passenger cabin scares me almost as bad as the thought of the police witnessing one of our drive-by paintball sign assassinations in California, or Miah’s face after we peeled out in that parking lot in Wanaka. We shared so many adventures and so many grins. Often, they occurred far enough from home that I’ve come to realize that I feel more at home with you than on any one dot on a meaningless map. Today, I think it’s important that all of us who felt so comfortable and so at home with Wallace remember now that we are not homeless, but instead, we should find ourselves perpetually at home, living in the same exciting world that we were once lucky enough to share with this incredible human being.

Wallace, you are a legend. I look up to you more than any person I have ever met. You stood up for me when I was a little freshman, getting picked on in Ms. McKinney’s math class. You guided my love life with witty golf course gossip every day after school in Boulder. You talked with me at length on subjects profound enough that I chose to add a philosophy major to my college path. And I reckon it’s no surprise that, after I saw your NZ photos, I found myself spending an entire season in Wanaka, with you. I am realizing that an immeasurable component of my personality came from who you were, Wallace, and I just can’t thank Weems, Nancy, Ben, or Packy enough for sculpting and introducing this incredible person into the world, and into my life. Wallace, you shaped more than turns in the snow and smiles on faces. You shaped who I am, a statement that, by my estimation, also applies to at least every person present here today. Wallace, we love you more than any words can explain, and you will not be forgotten.