valerie hope

The world has become increasingly and unnecessarily difficult- it’s fast paced, busy, sharp, and offers little grace and/or patience. We grow up and all of the sudden we are expected to participate in a world we weren’t taught about with tools that are little to not applicable. The weight of the world often feels heavy and inescapable- but there are people who make that heaviness a little lighter.

There are people that we share this life with that make life a little bit more bearable, people who light up a room, people who allow the busy world to melt away, people who inspire, people who uplift, and people who fearlessly stand tall next to you. Valerie Hope Thompson was one of those people.

Today I’m going to tell Val and Al’s story and I hope that many will resonate with it. I hope this can offer a smile or a laugh, a way to grieve, or a moment to cry.

I met Valerie when I was 5 years old, she was my neighbor, my first real friend. We used to climb trees and play outside- we chased sunlight knowing when the sun set we’d have to return home and wait until the sun rose again to see each other. We called each other our baby buds. She moved away and when she moved back, she moved right across the street from my Mimi- it was kismet. Our friendship picked up as if it never ended, except we weren’t five anymore. We just understood each other, if I wasn’t at her house, she was at mine. My Nana used to take us shopping at Abercrombie (a big fucking deal for the both of us), we’d get matching outfits and think we were the coolest people to walk the big bad Bangor mall. We’d spend hours on Chat Roulette eating any and every snack we could find which 10/10 always included whipped cream out of the can. She had a camera and it was always so important that we brought it everywhere, the amount of photoshoots we would do was unreal. We would pretend to be models and we could be goofy as goofy could get. We’d laugh so hard we’d convinced ourselves maybe, just maybe we were getting abs. I remember sitting on her bed listening to Shake That by Eminem and Nate Dog over a hundred times so that we could write down the lyrics word for word in order to learn the song. We would share our clothes, our food, our secrets, our pain. We’d dance until we couldn’t and laugh even when no one else was. We’d antagonize Mr. Crabtree and play silly games in his class. We would yell at each other from across the room or across the hall. Val would always tell me she was going to marry my little brother one day, it was an on going joke but I always held on a little hope that one day she’d be my sister-in-law. Whether it be pool parties, running the roads of the west side, cheering, chasing boys, collecting as many ten dollar bills as we could to go to as many days of the fair as we could, slumber parties on the trampoline, or dancing to songs like the Bad Touch for YouTube, we we’re having fun while the world melted away around us- even if we weren’t doing anything, we were having fun just being together.

Valerie was beautiful, and so was her soul, she was one of the original ride or die kind of friends- always always down to do whatever- she was never scared to be loud, she was proud to be loud!, she was funny, she was kind, she was brave, she always took the chance rather than regret the what if. Valerie was fearless- something I always admired. She was never scared to be silly, she was never scared to be confident, she was never scared to be her authentic self. Valerie was the life of the party, always dancing and always laughing. And she’d be absolutely pissed if I didn’t mention she was a California girl from San Diego.

A while back I met a couple in passing and spoke with them for about an hour- by the end of our conversation they mentioned how I was a travel angel. They explained that travel angels were people that had touched their lives in passing- I loved that connotation. Valerie was a travel angel. She was loved by so many and touched the lives of many more. It didn’t matter where Valerie was or what she was doing, she was a gravitational force, her energy magnetic. Whether it be her big blue beautiful eyes or cheeky smile or charismatic laugh, you couldn’t help but feel warmth when in her bubble.

Valerie was larger than life. She had grace for everyone around her- but the world did not have grace for her. I sit here and wonder what if? I sit here with a pit in my stomach and a hole in my heart – as do many of you reading this. As we grieve the loss of the bright and bubbly spirit that Valerie was may we all relish in the love that she gave us, the confidence she inspired, and the memories that we all share with her. Her love will live on in all of our hearts and her spirit will surround us like a hug from the San Diego sun.