Paul Lewczyk

[TSNBDSC]

RIP sir.

[AiO]

I wish I had known the man that so many of you call friend.

 

Rest in Peace, Paul.

[tennesseeboy]

I hold it true,

Whate'r befall

I feel it when I sorrow most

Better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all

Tennyson

 

God bless, Paul.

[Movinon]

RIP

[30dive]

The more you complain. The longer God makes you live.

 

His signature sends chills up my spine. I hope he is with the love of his life.

 

If not for the grace of God there goes I.

[EndZoneCrew]

R.I.P.

[nick in* england]

I shared the odd PM with GoBiB - he had kind words and advice for me when my mother-in-law died suddenly and he also had an appreciation for attractive British women. It is chilling and sad to hear he killed himself - I don't want to imagine the pain and despair he must have been feeling. But my thoughts now are with his family and friends he has left behind. Life is hard, but a suicide hits the people left behind the hardest - Tom, and anyone else that knew Paul please accept my condolences and know, for a fleeting internet moment, you are in my thoughts.

[BUFFALOTONE]

R.I.P

[blzrul]

From today's "Presidential [mis]Speak Calender":

 

"Put your arm around somebody who hurts and tells 'em you love 'em".

 

-GWBush, 3/10/05

 

This would possibly set off a firestorm on PPP, with a lot of yelling about flightsuits and hot pockets (not to mention KoolAid) but I just thought how ironic it is that now that Paul's gone I finally found something I can agree with GWB on...

 

He'd probably slap me around for saying so.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

From today's "Presidential [mis]Speak Calender":

 

"Put your arm around somebody who hurts and tells 'em you love 'em".

 

-GWBush, 3/10/05

 

This would possibly set off a firestorm on PPP, with a lot of yelling about flightsuits and hot pockets (not to mention KoolAid) but I just thought how ironic it is that now that Paul's gone I finally found something I can agree with GWB on...

 

He'd probably slap me around for saying so. 

700648[/snapback]

 

He'd probably slap me, too, if I didn't call you a manipulative B word for posting that.

 

 

(Inside joke between me and Debbie...don't delete please...)

[John from Riverside]

I have never met BIB but I have posted around this board for years......and BIB was part of my "internet family"

 

I am sad for what has happened...and I am equally sad that I didnt know about his situation with his wife.

 

Rest in peace Paul....I would like to think that you are looking down on us hand in hand with your wife.

[UConn James]

Like everyone else, I was shocked to log on and read that Paul (BiB, Ghost of BiB) chose to end his life. I am not a weeper by any means, yet I’m tearing up that someone I ‘virtually knew’ is gone. Like most, I only knew him as a fellow poster. His contributions to the PPP boards always held a certain weight b/c of his long experience in geo-politics. For anyone who wrote in metaphors and at great length about the theory of something, Paul would saunter in to write one sentence that hit right at the heart of things. I remember a couple of run-ins in PPP but in time I came to realize that he was right and it comforts me that despite what I may think about the politics of a person who lives in a white house, there are other people who sit behind desks that dream up ways to keep us safe and to try to keep the nations and groups of the world from tearing at each others’ throats. I said as much in one thread where someone else overreacted to some issue of the day, and he sent me a PM saying that it meant a lot to him when he helps someone Get It. I’m glad I had the chance to let him know that all was not for naught. And then there were the times when he held clinics on the Art of Smart-Ass. I’m sure even the “Evil B word Woman” will lament the loss of threads wryly asking what she was wearing. He sure could lighten up a thread. I always thought of him as this board’s Lt. Col. Frank Slade (Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman”), and maybe that was a little prescient if you know what that movie is about….

 

I was aware that Paul had lost his wife a couple of years back and that he took it extremely hard, at times sinking into deep depression. He seemed to delve wholly into his work, TBD, and occupying himself with friends in the community, from here, and those he’d come to know around the world in the course of his travels. From the stories recounted here, he seemed like the kind of friend everyone deserves in real life. That he took the loss of his wife so hard is a testimony to how much he loved her.

 

In the recent months, Paul had been talking a lot about moving to a different country (I think he mentioned Greece or the South of France), maybe because he was tiring of how sh--headed this country’s ethos has become, maybe because he desired to get away from the place that held so many happy memories that now came to haunt him. And yet, it didn’t seem that he actually wanted to --- or was --- going to go anywhere. Those posts now hark on him mulling Not Being Here Anymore in a bigger sense than Alexandria, VA.

 

I have had some times myself in the past year where everything seems too much. How to start out in the world where despite my having done extremely well in college, I’ve been on interviews where the person points to my current job, self-employed in a construction niche, and says, ‘You should be doing something better than this’ and yet no one is giving me a chance. Kind of like people who surmise that a beautiful woman “must be somebody’s baby” as the song goes, but she laments that she’s not; she’s too beautiful. Last November featured a mini breakdown where I wasn’t asking whether I should, but how. I survived it by just plugging on and I’m still doing that a day at a time but there are times when those 3 a.m. thoughts would get a little scary if I shared them with anyone. I’m not going to say that my sadness at Paul’s death will keep me from doing something --- I can’t make that promise. I’m trying to get involved in things and get things done, helping out people in my life who need help and trying to avoid the… dullness… and the tide of an American conscience that seems to be circling the drain and a wider human ethos that first seeks death and destruction as the answer to a problem of dwindling resources and people who don’t think the same things as them. And yet, there are slivers of hope left like when I spend a weekend looking after my nephew while my brother and sister-in-law are at drill weekend or when I got checked out by my high school secret crush while I was mowing, who if possible is even more beautiful and special now. And there’s the knowledge that I don’t know if I’d be able to go through with an active death. I think it’s more like what Jeff Buckley says in his song “Grace.” “I’m not afraid to go. But it goes so slow.” I worked a job once doing an outbuilding foundation with a guy who’s a psychology professor and as we took shelter under his porch from pouring rain, another guy who was working with us was talking about a distanced cousin of his who hanged himself. A 40-ish farmer who had no wife, worked himself raw every day for not much money, was going into foreclosure and it just got to be too much for him and he saw no avenue for change (people talk about that as if it’s something so easy to do; to uproot your life and “start anew” and somehow ignore the baggage). We talked about whether there is such a thing as rational suicide. As is the case with that farmer, I think there is.

 

Paul, it seems, reached that tipping point. May he find his peace and be reunited with his love in what dreams may come.

[IBTG81]

Like everyone else, I was shocked to log on and read that Paul (BiB, Ghost of BiB) chose to end his life. I am not a weeper by any means, yet I’m tearing up that someone I ‘virtually knew’ is gone. Like most, I only knew him as a fellow poster. His contributions to the PPP boards always held a certain weight b/c of his long experience in geo-politics. For anyone who wrote in metaphors and at great length about the theory of something, Paul would saunter in to write one sentence that hit right at the heart of things. I remember a couple of run-ins in PPP but in time I came to realize that he was right and it comforts me that despite what I may think about the politics of a person who lives in a white house, there are other people who sit behind desks that dream up ways to keep us safe and to try to keep the nations and groups of the world from tearing at each others’ throats. I said as much in one thread where someone else overreacted to some issue of the day, and he sent me a PM saying that it meant a lot to him when he helps someone Get It. I’m glad I had the chance to let him know that all was not for naught. And then there were the times when he held clinics on the Art of Smart-Ass. I’m sure even the “Evil B word Woman” will lament the loss of threads wryly asking what she was wearing. He sure could lighten up a thread. I always thought of him as this board’s Lt. Col. Frank Slade (Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman”), and maybe that was a little prescient if you know what that movie is about….

 

I was aware that Paul had lost his wife a couple of years back and that he took it extremely hard, at times sinking into deep depression. He seemed to delve wholly into his work, TBD, and occupying himself with friends in the community, from here, and those he’d come to know around the world in the course of his travels. From the stories recounted here, he seemed like the kind of friend everyone deserves in real life. That he took the loss of his wife so hard is a testimony to how much he loved her.

 

In the recent months, Paul had been talking a lot about moving to a different country (I think he mentioned Greece or the South of France), maybe because he was tiring of how sh--headed this country’s ethos has become, maybe because he desired to get away from the place that held so many happy memories that now came to haunt him. And yet, it didn’t seem that he actually wanted to --- or was --- going to go anywhere. Those posts now hark on him mulling Not Being Here Anymore in a bigger sense than Alexandria, VA.

 

I have had some times myself in the past year where everything seems too much. How to start out in the world where despite my having done extremely well in college, I’ve been on interviews where the person points to my current job, self-employed in a construction niche, and says, ‘You should be doing something better than this’ and yet no one is giving me a chance. Kind of like people who surmise that a beautiful woman “must be somebody’s baby” as the song goes, but she laments that she’s not; she’s too beautiful. Last November featured a mini breakdown where I wasn’t asking whether I should, but how. I survived it by just plugging on and I’m still doing that a day at a time but there are times when those 3 a.m. thoughts would get a little scary if I shared them with anyone. I’m not going to say that my sadness at Paul’s death will keep me from doing something --- I can’t make that promise. I’m trying to get involved in things and get things done, helping out people in my life who need help and trying to avoid the… dullness… and the tide of an American conscience that seems to be circling the drain and a wider human ethos that first seeks death and destruction as the answer to a problem of dwindling resources and people who don’t think the same things as them. And yet, there are slivers of hope left like when I spend a weekend looking after my nephew while my brother and sister-in-law are at drill weekend or when I got checked out by my high school secret crush while I was mowing, who if possible is even more beautiful and special now. And there’s the knowledge that I don’t know if I’d be able to go through with an active death. I think it’s more like what Jeff Buckley says in his song “Grace.” “I’m not afraid to go. But it goes so slow.” I worked a job once doing an outbuilding foundation with a guy who’s a psychology professor and as we took shelter under his porch from pouring rain, another guy who was working with us was talking about a distanced cousin of his who hanged himself. A 40-ish farmer who had no wife, worked himself raw every day for not much money, was going into foreclosure and it just got to be too much for him and he saw no avenue for change (people talk about that as if it’s something so easy to do; to uproot your life and “start anew” and somehow ignore the baggage). We talked about whether there is such a thing as rational suicide. As is the case with that farmer, I think there is. 

 

Paul, it seems, reached that tipping point. May he find his peace and be reunited with his love in what dreams may come.

700692[/snapback]

 

It's amazing how the words just flow when speaking about Paul, isn't it? I'm sure you could have kept on writing, and writing, as I could have.

Just one of the examples of how many lives he has touched.

[mead107]

shock , shock , shock ..... the ghost will allways be with us . Rest in peace .

[jjamie12]

RIP Paul. You will be missed. God Bless You.

[BillsWatch]

RIP Paul

[jester43]

Holy holy cow... ...I am just seeing this all for the first time this afternoon and am startled and saddened, to say the least. Not only was Paul one of the few here who like to talk auto racing with me privately, I could always tell that he, like I, was into all different types of it. I thought that was cool about him.

 

Last summer we were sending PMs back and forth about Boris Said because I can get inside dirt on Boris's racing career, and Paul had him on his NASCAR fantasy team. I was in New Zealand at the time and having an absolute blast. He mentioned sort of wistfully that he had thought about moving to either Aus or NZ at times.

 

I also remember the sad story of the loss of his wife, but I have to admit that I have pulled away from TBD so much in the past couple years that I never put two and two together and realized that the guy I was writing to from New Zealand was the guy who had lost his wife. And I suppose if I had, I would have better understood why he said that. Instead, it just sort of went over my head. I am really sorry about that.

 

And I am really sorry that I never found a reason to meet him, especially since he lived only 2 hours from me. Frankly, I knew almost nothing about the guy before I opened this thread, but I now know for sure that I would have enjoyed talking to him.

 

My condolences here to everyone here who knew him personally. I hope the passage of time and sharing memories of your friend with each other will provide you some solace.

[ACor58]

godspeed Paul

[bills_fan]

God bless you Paul. RIP and I hope you are with your wife.

[blzrul]

He'd probably slap me, too, if I didn't call you a manipulative B word for posting that. 

(Inside joke between me and Debbie...don't delete please...)

700650[/snapback]

I would have been disappointed if you'd let the opportunity go by - he would certainly not have let it pass!