A while back I posted something on Facebook about the need to show more appreciation for the people you have in your life. I said that it was something I was thinking a lot about recently and wanted to try and find a way to do it.
Since then, I have been working on writing a series of letters. Not emails, or texts, iMessages, or other electronic communications. I’ve actually been picking out individuals from my past and present that I know have had a notable impact on my life. I’ve sat down and wrote out sincere, sometimes incredibly personal and emotional letters that convey how this person has affected me.
Some of the people I’m writing to are people in my life now. Some are people that I only knew for a short period of time but for various reasons had a major impact on me.
I’m not delivering these letters through a blog post for the whole world to see. Most of these letters are incredibly private and are meant to be read by only the individual for whom it is addressed.
But for today, I’m making an exception.
Below you will find a letter which is addressed to J.C. Chiasson. J.C. was a longtime friend of mine that passed away in February of 2007. I never got to tell him how much of a great friend he was while he was here. And then in a flash he was gone. He is a prime example of why we all need to tell people how they have changed us. How they have helped us. How they made our lives better.
So with that said, here’s my letter to J.C.:
Tour Stop: Emmerson Street, Moncton
Tour Highlight: J.C. Chiasson
Dear J.C.,
So many of us spend so much time in our lives worrying about our friends, our family, our career, our health, and these days simply surviving. And even though most of us appreciate and love those around us, it’s not too often that we really take the time to let someone know how they have made your own life better. For me, amid this whole COVID-19 thing, I’ve become much more aware of how people from my past and present have affected me. It’s inspired me to reach out and tell them that I became a better person because they were a part of my life at one time or another. This letter is like others I have written to various people I’ve known over the years that have had a notable impact on my life. I’ve dubbed it my “2020 Appreciation Tour”. My next stop on this tour is Emmerson Street in Moncton, which brings me to why you are receiving this letter.
Of all the people I have met over the years, I think it is safe to say that the story of how we met is at the top of the list.
“How did you meet him?”, my mom asked me.
“He just followed me home from school”, I replied.
Somewhere at the start of grade 9 we struck up a conversation on our way home from school. I lived by the Dud James and you were down on Dominion Street. We’d often chat about school or various things teenage kids talk about. But in a short period of time, we were hanging out a lot and eventually became great friends. That friendship spanned decades and across provinces and cities.
When I think of growing up here in Moncton, you’re the first real friend I think of. I have so many fond memories of you and Jason sleeping over to play video games into the wee hours of the night. Two of us on the Nintendo while the other one kept an eye on Bleu Nuit for the “good parts”. From grade 9 through all of high school, you are connected to most of my biggest memories from that time in my life.
I never really thanked you for being there when I need a friend at grade 9 prom. I was so upset and found you somewhere in the gym at the school and told you I had to leave. You never batted an eye and just said you’d come with me. We made our way to Burger King where I balled my eyes out and you just sat there with me. You didn’t say much but you stayed with me until I was ready to go home. I never forgot that, and I wish I had been able to thank you for it while you were alive.
You were a great friend. Even after moving to Montreal, you reached out to me and we chatted for like an hour on MSN Messenger. I remember it feeling like no time had passed at all. It’s the same thing when I see Jason out west every now and then. It’s a friendship that time and distance was never going to put a dent in.
If you were alive today, I’d thank you for being my friend. I’d thank you for all the great memories. I’d thank you for listening to me go on and on about whoever it is I happened to have the hots for that day. I’d tell you that there are very few people in the world with as kind of a soul as you had. I know you had some hard times and crappy things happened to you. But you rarely showed it and were always a friend to everyone you met.
In all my letters I have been writing, I’ve had this section about why I chose to start doing these now. I keep coming back to a quote I heard many years ago:
“They say when you reach the end of your life, you regret the things you didn’t do, not the things you did.”
I’m not dying and I’m not sick but I’m also not willing to wonder if years from now, will I be asking myself “Should I have told people how much they meant to me?” People deserve to know that they mattered to others, regardless of the passage of time. That they have made a difference to someone who came into their life. This kind of stuff doesn’t get said enough (especially by us guys) so I’m going my own way and making sure I do take the time for it.
The only crappy thing about this letter is that I’m writing it 4,848 days too late. You died on February 9th, 2007. We had a wake for you here where your friends remembered who you were and how you touched the lives of everyone you knew. I know I never got to say these things while you were alive. But through the mysteries of the universe, I hope somehow this letter travels through cyberspace and makes it to wherever you ended up.
You were a great friend and I will always remember you for being such a great human being. You are greatly missed.
Your friend,
Matt
