Like so many other people I’ve seen posting about Lindsay on social media the past few months, I did not necessarily know Lindsay for a long time, but I felt known by Lindsay on a deep level so quickly, that it will always feel like longer of a friendship than it actually was.
I first remember learning of Lindsay and Chris through Lindsay’s brother, Eric. I was studying for and (finally!) passed my CPA exam within a few weeks of Chris passing the bar, and Eric kept telling me I had to meet these people. That finally happened just over 6 years ago before a Sounders match– see the attached “us-ie” that Lindsay casually threw out there as something we had to do, because obviously we needed to document this new friendship.
That day, I remember going home and telling Lauren, my wife, that I met the most amazing couple who we needed to hang out with all the time. Lindsay and Chris were so welcoming, inquisitive, and caring about our family from so early on in our friendship!
I was completely right about thinking that Lauren would hit it off with Lindsay – they bonded over their mutual loves of Real Housewives of wherever-I-never-want-to-live, Ikea, cutting up hot dogs properly so your kids don’t choke, education, wine, and many more things. And so did I – I’ve always loved that Lauren wasn’t friends with Lindsay and I wasn’t friends with Chris – the four of us were friends in a non-gendered way that just felt natural and right.
I remember them coming to visit us one summer (likely 2015 as they didn’t have Arya yet) at our family’s farm on Whidbey Island, and Lindsay being Lindsay, brought along an Ikea trainset for our daughter, Langley, just because. It’s not just the big things that made Lindsay so special, it was the small things like thinking “oh, they’ve got a kid, I’ll bring her a fun toy!” that seemed to come so naturally to her that showed how kind, caring, and selfless that she was. After they moved to the Eastside, we hoped to see much more of Chris and Lindsay, but ironically, I think our daughters Langley (~3 years older than Arya) and Puddle (~9 months younger than Arya) saw them more than Lauren and I did because they went to the same daycare/preschool as Arya started out at. Langley was a talker back then (quite reminiscent of how Arya is now, down to the left-handedness) and would often have conversations with Lindsay in the morning as she was dropping Arya off. It really hurts to see someone so young and so wonderful leave so soon. Lindsay changed the world with how she connected people. She would meet you where you were at, and you would know that you mattered and you were seen – whether you were some random stranger off of “Buy Nothing,” you were a coworker, you were one of her brother’s friends, or you were a kid at St Thomas School or New Beginnings Daycare, I’ve seen so much evidence that this is how Lindsay left you feeling. Seen, heard, and loved. I’ll always say hi to the flamingos at the zoo for you Lindsay, and I’ll never stop laughing at how much distrust you had for birds of prey.
