Ryan

 I wrote a description of Ryan's life for his memorial.  We shared it on his memorial website. It's the draft that felt right to share at the time, the most comfortable for other family members, the safest somehow.  Here in the space where I share my most authentic thoughts, it feels right to share the first draft of Ryan's life story, the one that most closely reflects the way I saw him, a mother's view of a treasured child. 

Ryan Charles Gimnig was a gentle giant and a hidden gem.

He arrived in the world on May 31, 2004, 10 pounds and 2 ounces of pure curiosity. For months he quietly studied the world as it came within view. Then he discovered he could go to the world, and he certainly did. He ran, climbed and explored his way through toddler years, learning his limits through 2 broken arms and untold leaps and tumbles.

Ryan was a child of contradictions. He was fearless to jump and climb yet cautious enough to study before he acted. He ras rough and tumble with his friends and family and unbelievably gentle with small children and animals. 

Ryan cared deeply for others, happy to honor a request, yes passionately not obedient. He resisted authoritative demands and instead taught me to as him for what I needed, not because I believed it was best for him (what did Mom know?) but because it was what I needed for me. 

Ryan ran like the wind, yet found it painful to stand.

As a child, Ryan was liked by most everyone but tended to have one favorite friend. He enjoyed many things and yet often turned his focus to a single joy - a particular series of books, a single board game. 

By his middle years Ryan's intelligence led him to board games where he thrilled in finding successful strategies but didn't seem to care if he won. The last time he played chess with me I had just finished my 3rd move when he said, "Don't do that. I'll beat you in 2 turns." He was seven.

Ryan was fiercely independent and strongly attached to his parents. He fought often with his sister and also sought her out to play and patiently helped her when her Legos wouldn't hold together. 

As a homeschooler Ryan enjoyed the freedom to run in the woods and play hours of board games, yet in the end he yearned for the structure of school. In 7th grade he started school at the Little Middle School in Atlanta, and then switched to Rivers Academy where he and Megan attended together for two years.  

In the end he just wanted to be a normal kid in a normal public school. Ryan was entirely too clever, thoughtful and witty to be a normal kid, but we did find him a normal public high school to attend in Anacortes WA. He enjoyed his studies, especially things he could create, including architectural drawing, pottery, robotics, and aeronautics, until Covid pushed everything online. He never did get to finish a year of normal school. 

What he did was quietly persist through the pain of his last months telling no one of his growing despair, hoping for an answer in medications that never delivered the relief he's been told to expect. 

Those who knew him best saw through his quiet and often withdrawn presence to his wicked humor and gleeful smile. With his closest friends he giggled uncontrollably. His classmates found him kind, dependable, humble and gentle. 

Ryan's sparkle was both brilliant and elusive. In the end it eluded even himself, and he could not bring himself to continue searching for it. He approached the problem like any other - studying carefully, reaching out to his parents with love, and then implementing a flawless plan to depart a life he could not bear to live. 

Ryan said his good-byes February 15, and I discovered his body already cold on February 16, 2022.