BOSTON (WHDH) - A brother and sister are on a mission to honor their late father.
Hilary and Jonathan Krieger lost their father Neil to coronavirus back in April.
“He had kidney disease so we were very worried about him,” Hilary said.
A scientist and entrepreneur, Neil’s kids remember the Jamaica Plain native most for his kindness and creativity — especially his ability to make them smile with a made-up word.
“He was creative, he was whimsical,” said. “He saw the little things in life and saw the moments and opportunities for having fun and celebration,” Hilary said.
The word in question? “Orbisculate.”
“Growing up, whenever an orange or grapefruit, sometimes a cherry tomato would squirt out juice and hit you in the face, that was the orange ‘orbisculating’ on you,” Hilary explained.
Hilary said she only found out “Orbisculate” was not a real word when she lost a bet to a friend.
“He had no idea he was gonna cost me $5 when he started out introducing this word into our family vocabulary,” she said.
In honor of their father’s memory, and to help other families dealing with loss during the pandemic, the Kriegers launched a campaign to get the word “orbisculate” into the dictionary.
“If something sprays in your eye from a citrus fruit, or anything else, it has just ‘orbisculated’ on you,” Jonathan said. “If you start using the word, more people will use it and the more likely it will get in the dictionary.”
They are also selling “Orbisculate” merchandise on their website.
All of the proceeds go to Carson’s Village, an organization that helps people deal with the loss of a loved one.
“They work with people from the moment someone passes away to help with all the emotional traumatic stuff about it like grieving and how to handle that and also the logistics things of finding a burial site and making an obituary,” Jonathan said.
For more information on their campaign, click here.
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