csiaw day 7: whatever you want: love letters to the original six (team graveyard)
thank you for bringing this brilliant, ambitious, flawed, and wonderful team together. thank you for never playing politics, for respecting women and lgbtqia+ people and the differently abled and racial minorities and those with less institutional power than yourself. thank you for sharing your mind and your wisdom, for loving science and always staying curious. thank you for your leadership and compassion. thank you for having quirks and little grissom things. thank you for being such a complex character and such an all around humanist. thank you for following the evidence and for believing above everything that it only takes one person to save a life.
you are truly the once and forever king.
thank you for relentlessly chasing after the things you want in life. thank you for being bold, for standing up for yourself and for other women. thank you for being unapologetic about who you are and where you came from. thank you for being clever and courageous and for always having your team member’s backs. thank you for being so many things—a leader, a mother, a law enforcement professional, las vegas royalty, a dancer, one hell of a second, one hell of a first—and above all for always being yourself. there was nothing quite like that glint in your eye when you were hot on a case and suddenly knew you could solve it.
you are the once and forever queen.
thank you for being the rock of the team. thank you for constantly trying to better yourself and to be there for everyone. thank you for having integrity—for refusing to let any person or addiction or circumstance own you. thank you for never backing down from your convictions. thank you for being kind to children and old women, for leading a life that would have made your grandmother so proud. thank you for being a musician, a mentor, a friend, and a big brother. thank you for never forgetting your neighborhood or community, for being their guardian angel, even after you were gone. you did so much good in your life, and who knows what else you could have done if only you had more time.
goodnight, sweet prince. rest in peace.
thank you for being so genuinely good. thank you for continually learning and for wanting to do right by those around you. thank you for maintaining your belief in humanity even after having so many terrible things happen to you—from abuse to kidnapping to being held at gunpoint and shot and hurt and having your heart broken again and again. thank you for championing both the living and the dead. thank you for being sweet, for loving dogs and football and random bird trivia. thank you for your loyalty to the team. everyone is so proud of you, and you deserve to be where you are.
you’re a good man, pancho.
thank you for proving that our circumstances don’t define us. thank you for actively choosing to do good, despite coming from the home that you did. thank you for your feminism, for your scholarship, for your professional ambition. thank you for being brave, for defending battered women and forgotten children and people who have been knocked down by the system. thank you for having passion. thank you for never giving up on anything. thank you for always striving to solve the case, to save the day, to make it just one step further. thank you for being flawed, for your harshness and awkwardness and tendency to break down. thank you for always getting back up again. thank you for loving so fiercely. thank you for being so kind.
you are the heart of this team and this show.
thank you for being a light and for making others smile. thank you for caring so much for your friends. thank you for being so resourceful and creative. thank you for growing up without becoming jaded. thank you for learning the best of what grissom, catherine, warrick, nick, and sara had to offer you. thank you for bringing your own approach to being in the field. thank you for your goofiness. thank you for trying so hard not to let anyone down. thank you for loving history and surfing and coins and marilyn manson. thank you for being so esoterically and individually and uniquely and wonderfully you.
everyone is so proud of you, and you should be proud of you, too.
thank you for the stories. thank you for the science. but most of all, thank you for these characters. the show taught us again and again and again that, above everything, the people are the thing that matters. thank you for taking a team of these scientists-turned-family and letting us be part of it. it has been our pleasure to follow the evidence.
