by Shelley Davidow, English teacher Noosa Pengari Steiner School
A touching tribute to Gabriel Conor Runge by Shelley Davidow, English teacher Noosa Pengari Steiner School
“GRIEF is the price we pay for love,” Queen Elizabeth 2 said, in September 2011.
And so, for Gabriel Runge, our price is enormous. Gabriel has left a void that will never be filled.
Every day he brought laughter, joy and humour to our lives. He was kind, compassionate, funny and full of heart. He went out of his way to make everyone feel at ease; his trademark warmth and openness meant that girls and guys, children and adults loved being in his company.
Gabriel was so easy to love. His eyes were always sparkling with interest, wit and laughter. His laughter was so infectious that when he found his own jokes funny, he could even make us as teachers laugh with him. He shared his heart with everyone and radiated the purest love.
Once, Olivia and I, his maths and English teachers, were walking along the walkway to the classrooms and he pointed at us and called out “I love those two”. What kind of a teenager can do that? One with a huge soul that included everyone in its warmth.
Gabbie was gifted with a contagious joy. He was usually smiling or laughing and his laughter came easily and often. He was also mature beyond his years. On a daily basis, Gabriel made everyone feel appreciated and understood.
Gabriel loved home and family more than anything. He said to Jules on camp recently that he had a love/hate relationship with camps. He loved the experience of going on camp, but he also hated it because he always missed home so much.
You could feel, with Gabbie, how very much he loved his mum, his dad and his older brother. It was constantly evident in conversations with him that home was where this very special 16-year-old’s heart was.
He also had a huge imaginative world. He loved The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Game of Thrones. Like a true science fiction writer, he spent hundreds of hours creating an authentic parallel world.
Gabbie mapped out a grand otherworldly vision, which he planned to one day write about. His detailed drawings of this place spanning four pieces of A3 cardboard. Countries, mountain ranges, provinces – all written in an invented language. The story of this world and its people was to follow one day. Gabbie held in his imagination, another limitless universe.
Gabbie loved trains. He loved geography. He loved New York City and dreamt of visiting there one day. He was a deep thinker, moved by the plight of people less fortunate than he was and touched by books like To Kill a Mockingbird and I am J. The stories he wrote were growing more and more sophisticated. They were frequently set in foreign places and carefully researched, down to the real street names and apartment numbers, and linked to historical events.
Gabriel was a great actor, a talented artist, a gifted writer, a creative thinker and a gentle, gentle friend. He was a treasure to us. He showed us how to live a life of unbridled joy and connectedness.
His humour, his unbelievable stock of innovative ideas and information, his insights on so many things that passed others by, were part of his wise, wide and beautiful soul which we were so privileged to experience for too-short a time. We will miss him terribly and will treasure him always.
Stormy Beach by Gabriel Runge, 14 September 2014, aged 16
“The pail frail white-capped sea smashed against the grey granite rocks.
“The charcoal-coloured clouds rumbled and tumbled over a beach made of a billion Citrine stones.
“The black-trunked Norfolk pines, holding homes for superb seabirds, shadow the green grasses by the stormy beach.”
We will be tall, black-trunked Norfolk pines, holding home for you, our superb seabird Gabbie, even as waves shatter themselves against us, and the storms of life blow against us.
