The Pearl

The Beginning

Joshua David Pandit, 29, a wonderful son, brother, cousin, and grandson, passed away on the afternoon of June 15, 2011. Josh was the oldest child of David and Vikki Pandit and was a loving brother to his sister, Tara Pandit. He is also survived by grandparents Shahu Pandit, Lee and Linda Pittman, Joan and Gus Lueck and was preceded in death by grandmother Ruby Pandit. Josh was born on December 3, 1981 to a very loving family, and his care-free personality and good nature was evidence that he enjoyed his time here to the fullest. He will be greatly missed by all of his family, friends and co-workers. Visitation Sunday, June 19, 2011, from 3-5 PM, at Grove Hill Funeral Home. Funeral Service will be 10:00 AM Monday June 20, 2011 at the Dallas First Church of Seventh-Day Adventists, with interment to follow at Grove Hill Memorial Park.

After typing that never ending paragraph with my cousin Rohini, I thought to myself is that it? There was so much to my brother than a short and dull paragraph to sum up his life. It did not mention that he was my best friend, my big brother and the first love of my life. There is nothing that can break a bond between a brother and a sister. When you are born, you have 46 chromosomes, 23 from your mother and 23 from your father. Equal. So when you have a sibling, you are half of them ... far more than just having the same DNA code.

With the war in Iraq and Afghanistan going on for many years, you hear stories about fallen soldiers that died for their country. You turn it to your local news and you hear stories about people that died in a car crash or a gun shooting. What you do not hear on the news is about the family they leave behind. The person you hear about that died fighting for what they believe in or the person that died behind the wheel ... that is someone's daughter, son, sibling, grandchild, cousin, niece or nephew. When a family member that close to you passes away, where do you go from there?

So many things race through your mind, too many to name. You go through the stages of grief, but do you really move on? Do the memories really fade? When you know someone for all of your life, or in my case, 24 years...these memories just do not go away nor fade. My brother and I were joined at the hip. Everything he did, I did. Everywhere he would drive, I would want to go with him. When I was in elementary school, he would walk across the street to pick me up and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I would go to school and brag to all of my friends that my brother was in middle school and he was picking me up across the street. (I think it was cooler just to walk across a busy intersection by myself.) We used to watch old home videos of us when we were kids and our personalities toward each other were so genuine and so much the same to when we were older.

We would get annoyed with each other, but if you have a sibling then you know it was normal. On the other hand, I was so infatuated with my brother it was obvious. He always had a care-free personality, beautiful smile and a wicked sense of humor which was undoubtedly passed down from our mother. As a family we had so much fun! My father, Josh and I loved hunting and fishing. Anything outdoors we would do. I remember a time when we were younger and we went skiing at Angel Fire, New Mexico. I was upset because I had to stay back with the kindergarteners while my brother raced down the ski slopes by himself. All the countless trips we would have in Galveston on the beach with our whole family. My Nana and Grandpa (my dad's parents) would take us out in their minivan. They would stick all 6 of us cousins and my grandparents in that van and drive 4 hours to Galveston. There were a few times where our family would rent a house for the long weekends on the beach, during the summer and all stay in one gigantic house.

When you walk in the door all you smelt was Indian food coming from the kitchen, hearing children play and laughing. It was a good feeling growing up with. There are 6 of us cousins from my dad's side of the family and we are all a year apart. Rohini is the oldest then came Joshua. Rohini and Josh were inseparable growing up. They would play in Sabbath school together and wreak havoc playing at Nana and Grandpa's. When Cyrus was born, they had plenty of fun making his life hell. They would stick him in the closet or in the garage and close the door. Good thing I was smaller then and a daddy's girl, nobody would touch me...except Mallory. Shanaz was always the quiet one ... but it always blew my mind on how I was the one who always got in trouble.

Looking back on memories - we had the perfect family. I sometimes wish that I hadn't said that out loud. Maybe it was a curse that I would tell everyone that we had the perfect life. Nothing that bad happened in our family. My Nana passed away in 2001 which changed our family and how close we all were. Throughout the years, we became closer but whenever Joshua passed away, more of our family came together and we were more close to my mother's side of the family.

My cousin Caroline and my mom's sister Laura moved to Jupiter, FL a few years back which was hard. I was used to seeing Caroline aka Sissy Boat every weekend. Joshua and Caroline were so much alike. They both were infatuated with animals and conservation. As the years went on, Joshua still went hunting but mainly wanted to watch the animals instead of shooting them for their meat. I could probably count on one hand anything my brother killed. That's what I loved about him. We would often go to Wylie, TX and see the big cat conservation. He would marvel at how they moved, what made them tick and just their personalities. That always made me want to learn more about animals. Caroline now works to help sea turtles. When Joshua found out, he was so proud. They truly shared that in common. The best thing about my brother was how much alike we were but there were still so many things that were different.

We loved the same movies and would recite movie lines constantly which would make my dad and mom laugh. We would go to the movies late and while driving home, we would discuss the movie in detail and wonder the true meaning behind it. The movie we loved to discuss the most was Peter Pan. After watching the Disney version then Hook and then watching the Johnny Depp movie, Finding Neverland we had a lot to discuss. How each movie was different in its own way and often wondered about James Berry's infatuation with growing up and being a kid at heart. This story always reminded me of Josh and I. No matter how old we were, we were still kids. When it would snow, we would throw snowballs at each other, continuously play pranks on each other and play fight like we were little kids.

Josh always used to scare me to death! The worst mistake was telling him that I watched Steven King's IT. I remember one time in particular when Cyrus and Shanaz came over and they scared us to wit's end. The boys turned off the lights in the house and ran around the house. I got so scared; I crawled in the dog box in the den and hid until they couldn't find us. Low and behold, running across the kitchen, all I see is my brother's figure with the Scream's ghost face killer mask with a fake knife. Needless to say, I slept in my parents' room that night.

It was little things that made our relationship so close though out the years. He was never afraid to tell me about his love life and the girls he would date and always come to me for advice. He always knew that I would tell him the truth and I would be the first person to tell him he was an idiot if he did something dumb. I would introduce him to every boyfriend that I had. Of course, the one that he loved the most is the one that I am married to. He loved the fact that Robbie treated me well and loved to hunt and fish as much as Josh and my dad.

Joshua was hands down the funniest person that I had ever met, we were always laughing at each other and sending crazy text messages throughout the day with random funny movie quotes from our favorite movies. We loved watching old westerns, comedies with Adam Sandler and classic movies like Jaws and Tombstone. If it was a good movie we watched it. If we saw the trailer and loved it but the critics gave it bad reviews, we still watched it. After watching a movie at least twice, we would know every single line.

Our music was a little bit different though. When we were younger, he loved listening to old country music and I loved rap and top 40. When we grew up, he ended up listening to old Tupac, Queen and random rock songs and I was the one listening to country. He thought the new country wasn't really country and always made fun of it because of how depressing some of the lyrics were. I remember one time in particular his ex girlfriend made fun of country and made up a song that started with "My dog died today," we laughed so hard later in the years. If something funny happened, there was numerous times where he would literally fall on the floor with his hands on his stomach or spitting out his drink. His mission when making me laugh was me spitting out my drink ... it was more a competition with us. Whoever spit their drink out first lost. We would stay up after midnight talking and laughing to the point where my dad would wake up and tell us to go to sleep. When we were together, nothing in the world mattered. The day he left us, my world came crashing down.