Dear Jeff

On April 3, 2025, I lost my closest friend, Jeff Remillard. On May 4, 2025, I shared the following remarks at his memorial about his life, our friendship, and what he taught me about living and loving well. 🖤

Intro

Hi, everyone. I’m Travis wright.

Jeff and I turn 40 this year. We’ve known each other for 26 of them, and for the past 18, he was my closest friend.

For two decades we experienced and navigated the full spectrum of life’s peaks, valleys, and forests together.

It’s hard to grasp the vastness of Jeff’s life. In many ways, it feels like trying to make sense of a mountain blindfolded.

When trying to make sense of complex things, Jeff and I would often use metaphors to point at them from different angles. If you piece together a few of them, you begin to get a sense of the larger whole.

In that spirit, I’d like to spend the next few minutes sharing 3 metaphors I’ve been using to sketch the shape and scale of Jeff and his incredible life: Pennies, Pebbles, and Pottery.

First, Pennies.

Jeff and I’s favorite book is called the Slight Edge.¹ We first read it when we were 22. Like so many of the most important things in my life, Jeff discovered it and shared it with me.

The book is about the compounding power of small, consistent, daily actions. Like a penny that is allowed to sit and accrue interest, these small, daily efforts compound almost-invisibly at first, but over time, create increasingly visible and significant outcomes.

Jeff was one of the most intelligent, ingenious, devoted, and generous people I’ve ever met. He was a true polymath — from business, to sales, to poker, to markets, to health — he could embark on any topic, and not only self-learn it, but rapidly become world class at it.

How did he do it?

A penny a day.
A penny a day.
A penny a day.

I learned recently that the ancient Greeks, rather than the future waiting somewhere out in front, saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs. When you think about it, it’s a better metaphor than our present one. Where else could the future be than right here and now?²

Jeff was one of the most present people I ever met. He instinctively lived at the edge of this unfolding — I think this is why he was so in tune with the smallest signs of opportunity and the emerging future.

Jeff could see the exponential curves — the compounding pennies — before they curved.

I used to think it was because he lived somewhere way out in front of the rest of us. But, I now realize, he wasn’t out there, he was right here more than most.

Recently, Jeff began helping me with my health by teaching me the key findings of his 4 year quest to restore his. I knew almost nothing about health, so we started with a penny. Several times a week he’d call and give me a 15-minute download on a key piece of the puzzle. A penny a day. Inbetween, he’d text me a steady drip of small bits of info. A penny a day. On the next call, we’d discuss each piece and integrate it into the bigger picture. A penny a day. This is how we found our way through the terrain of life together.

A penny a day.
A penny a day.
A penny a day.

Second, Pebbles.

I recently learned that certain species of penguins collect and present small, smooth pebbles to their partners to show care and commitment.

I think it’s a beautiful image of how Jeff approached and compounded his relationships.

Through his collective ingenuity, Jeff created an abundance of knowledge, wisdom, and time for himself at a young age. And he, as evidenced by all of us in this room, overwhelmingly invested it into loving and elevating the lives of those around him. 

How did he do it?

A pebble a day.
A pebble a day.
A pebble a day.

Whether it was a surprise Amazon box with a new product he’d fallen in love with, or a funny voicemail, or a Facetime with my 3 year old daughter Sophie so she could watch Lily and Avi play together, or a call with my wife Jessica to keep her company on a long layover — Jeff was a devoted and world class pebbler. When he loved you, he loved all your people, too.

Recently he told me, I know it’s hard to chat for long when you’re with Sophie, but even just saying hi for a minute or two is meaningful. He understood the exponential power of all those little minutes more than anyone I ever met.

A pebble a day.
A pebble a day.
A pebble a day.

Lastly, Pottery.

There’s an ancient Japanese philosophy and art form for repairing broken pottery with gold.³

Rather than discarding the pieces or trying to make the cracks invisible, the technique highlights the cracks and creates a new, more beautiful vessel that celebrates the past and encourages us to embrace the scars of life and find beauty in the process of healing and renewal.

I read something recently that said: Our physical selves are but a piece of a much larger pattern. To lose the person is to remove a huge piece from the center of it, yet despite the pain, the larger pattern remains.⁴ Let the pain be pain, not in the hope that it will vanish but in the faith that it will fit in, find its place in the shape of things, and be then not any less pain but true to form.⁵

In the same way that Jeff lived his life, I believe he would have wanted us to be fully present with this moment and all it holds, then transcend and include it.

In that spirit, I’d like to close with this:

To trace the golden contours of Jeff’s relationships is to glimpse the mountain of his life. So, as we move forward, may we carry him with us into the unfolding now by holding onto each other the way that he so deeply loved each and every one of us. 

Until our nows meet again, rest in radiance, dear friend. I love you.

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Footnotes

1. Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness by Jeff Olson ↩︎
2. Adapted from the Afterword in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig ↩︎
3. The art form is called kintsugi ↩︎
4. Adapted from the Afterword in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig ↩︎
5. Adapted from “The Cure” by Albert Huffstickler. Published in Walking Wounded (Backyard Press, 1989) ↩︎