I lost my cousin Georgie to Covid 2 years ago, Feb 16th.

He was like my brother, a confidant, and one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. He and I became very close when we both ended up in prep school together and we were only a year apart.

We were famous for our high school parties, the “George & Alexis” parties. My aunt and uncle, his parents, had moved away to Florida, so he was essentially living on his own in their home. When I think back on this now, I can’t believe they allowed this, but he was really responsible and such a good guy. We would have 30 to 40 people over and it was just an absolute blast with food and lots of dancing. He was an amazing DJ. We shared our love of R&B and funk music.

He knew that if he ever played the opening horns for “Funkin’ for Jamaica” by Tom Browne, no matter where we were, I would get up and dance. He would go on to do this throughout our adult life … on the radio, at weddings, parties, etc. because he KNEW I would get up and dance and he would join me. Anytime, I hear that song to this day I can’t help but smile and think of him.

As children, we were best friends, best buddies through our teens and young adult years.
We grew into adults with careers and enjoyed great successes in our lives. Even though I moved away from my home state, we were always in touch!

I moved to Florida to be with my now husband and George would often come visit us on his way down to see his mom. One weekend, he came to see my husband Kirk & I in our new home and was surprised to see that my husband didn’t have the correct tools to finish a project. The two of them left for Home Depot, came home after a few hours, and then worked in the garage for the rest of the day. I made a delicious steak and pilaf dinner for him and marveled about what they built in my garage and in just a few hours!! There was shelving, a workbench, and Kirk now had every tool he could possibly need to do tasks around the house.

Georgie was just the guy who could do just about anything. I called him often just to check in but also to ask silly questions. When I became a mother to my girls, I would always see him at Christmas, and he always had the most thoughtful gifts for my two little girls.

We come from a very close knit Armenian family so I expected to carry on this loving relationship until we were both sitting in rocking chairs, reminiscing about how much fun we had. Sadly, that ended two years ago in February and to this day, I still can’t believe he’s gone. I was texting with him while he was in the hospital & very sick and made him promise me to please get better and when he did, he would maybe work a little less and enjoy the fruits of his labor. He agreed to that as well.

Trust me when I say, I was determined to keep him honest about this and make sure he went somewhere fabulous to recuperate. Maybe even Jamaica. Unfortunately for me and our entire huge close knit Armenian family, that did not happen.

He never made it out of the hospital. I will miss him for the rest of my days on this Earth.