Terminally ill Tucson restaurateur holds 'pre-wake wake' to say his goodbyes [View all]

[Ptah]

From that moment in the doctor’s office last November, when they hit him with the diagnosis — stage 4 lung cancer — Tucson restaurateur Pat Connors knew how he wanted to go out.

With a party. A big, giant, messy affair where laughter filled in for tears and deep long hugs replaced casual hellos.

On Tuesday, Connors got his party.

“I wanted people, if they could, to come say goodbye,” he said, as a reception line that quickly grew from a couple dozen to a couple hundred winded around booths and the bar, wrapped around tables of cheese and fruit plates and snaked into the kitchen area of Connor’s central Tucson restaurant. “It kind of developed into this.”

Dozens of people showed up early for “Wake me up; a party for Pat” — which Connors dubbed his “pre-wake wake” — and by the official party start time at 4:30 p.m., the restaurant was packed. Some guests told Manish Shah, who organized the party with Michael Luria, Kristin Brakke and a couple other friends, that they had to park four or five blocks from Connors’ 19-year-old Pastiche Food + Drink, 3025 N. Campbell Ave.

http://tucson.com/news/local/terminally-ill-tucson-restaurateur-holds-pre-wake-wake-to-say/article_1b5f366d-d1f6-5f43-9aa6-ec832402bab0.html