I Miss Bicki by Claudia Tessier

those who worked for him - but no higher than he set for himself - and then he showed them how to meet those standards. He was a giver.

He was there too for his community. Not willing to accept retirement as an opportunity to be idle, he offered his volunteer services to his new community, Lake Helen. The equestrian center he helped bring to fruition there was among his proudest accomplishments. He was a giver.

But Fred’s greatest pride was his family – his wife, his children, his grandchildren. He took care of them, he nurtured them, he pushed them to be the best they can be, he enjoyed them, and he loved them. And they always came first for him. Always! He was a giver. What an example!

When I flew down to visit him just two weeks before his open-heart surgery, we had a very special visit together – sharing memories, looking through family pictures, catching up on each others’ lives – and planning our next visits.

I want to tell you about Bicki Tessier – you knew him as Fred and you knew him as an adult. I knew him as my big brother, and he’s always been Bicki to me.

Bicki was 6 years older than me and throughout my childhood he was my hero, my protector, my confidant.

After Bicki graduated from high school and moved to Orlando, for my 16th birthday, he flew me from the cold North to sunny Florida for a mid-winter vacation. My first flight, my first real vacation that was just one of the many gifts that Bicki gave me, most of them not so tangible, all of them were meaningful because Bicki was a giver.

Eventually I too grew up, and as adults we went our very separate ways, living very different lives, mostly on different coasts. But we never stopped being there for each other.

We always knew we could tell each other anything. We always knew we could depend on one another. And when he and our sister Lucille and I would get together for our almost annual sibling reunions, we laughed and enjoyed each other just as if we were kids again.

Bicki – now Fred - never stopped being there for others, never stopped giving. Though he never finished college, he rose to very responsible management positions in aerospace, where he set high standards for

I still can’t quite grasp that those next visits are not to be. He was too young, he was too good and he was too loved. In the words of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind......I know.
But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Each of us has lost something in losing him and we will all miss him. I have lost my big brother and life won’t be the same.

I miss Bicki.