Dillon! 

We had so much more to do together. Despite having grown up alongside one another, we never got to meet in-person! I know you were trying to get your passport ready (finally!) to make up for all the lost hugs over the years. Alas, what we lacked in hugs, we made up for in countless long conversations, gaming sessions, and brainstorming. I can’t say that about everyone.

There’s something really cool with knowing someone from being a young teenager to full adulthood: You realize just how much people can change and grow while still being themselves the whole way. We were both rather rough around the edges in our youth, stumbling our way through the growing pains of a world where digital friendships were only just beginning. In that time you saw me go from a shy class clown with an edge to a pot-stirrer who would do anything for their loved ones. And in that time I saw you go from a fiery personality with the initiative of a pioneer to a warm supportive soul whose heartbeat acted as the metronome that kept our group moving in sync. We often joked of how different “Season 1 Dillon” was to now, but you never lost your passion, vigour, and leadership. You simply bent lightning and bottled it in your friends.

To put it more bluntly: I and many others owe our lifelong friendships to your willingness to wrangle everyone up and kick off Discord meetings, D&D sessions, long game nights, and silly conversations. 

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I talked about you perhaps a disproportional amount to people in my life, because I “know a guy in Colorado / Montana, and over there they have…” and it was always fun being able to describe that our Discord’s Captain was an American who decided to adopt a litter of Canadians – Francophones and all – into his ever-shifting digital family. I often referred to you and the others by their prevalent Canadian hometown, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re an hono(u)rary dual citizen.

Meeting Henry has been a pleasure, and I can see why you loved him so much. As much as the very frequent “I’m going to go play games with my boyfriend now!” meant an end to our fun (read: me crushing you at fighting games), I’m glad that you had the common courtesy to let him know just how those fights went down. Perhaps I should have hit you with fewer uppercuts, given that one uppercut that Henry so fondly recalled in his message to you – I fear that I may have been responsible for uppercut-by-proxy.

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On memories and daily banters:

The oldest images I have on my hard drive are from 2011. They’re just errant accidental screenshots I took of our group chats back then. Your old usernames and chat messages appear, and we’re all still in there together. In that picture many of us didn’t realize we’d still be alongside one another for the long haul: supporting each other through the dark, dodging novel viruses, appearing in each others’ wedding photos, and roasting one another about cinnamon buns.

It’s weird, yet expected, that one of the main things I’ll miss is your willingness to mock me just about every day, with the classic “nyeh, I’m matt, and <insert mundane normal thing but say it in a mocking tone as if it’s stupid>”. We still make those jokes, so consider that a part of your legacy :^). One of the last things you wrote to us was in that vein, and it was perfectly hilarious.

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Bonus note:

I remember at the height of the pandemic, you decided to host a D&D game with everyone, and it was most of the players’ first times. I remember doing my nightly solitary run and just listening to your game on Discord, and I scared some people who were walking around because I was this stocky male figure laughing while I stomped and wheezed down a dark suburban street at 11pm.

I still remember your laugh at how ridiculous each of the players’ decisions were. And how the group collectively burst into maniacal laughter when you described Garrett’s character spiking a goblin into a river so hard that it exploded into a fine mist. As someone who has played a lot of D&D, that still has to be my favourite moment – and I was just an audience member!

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Closing:

To this day, people will still call you Xero before fumbling about and switching to Dillon. There’s something to that – to have forged friendships so tight that they still strongly ascribe an identity to someone who they almost exclusively experienced through voice and text. Something unique to a sort of modern epistolary friendship.

I mentioned it to your dad, but you guys had such an awesome relationship. I always loved hearing about how y’all would try new things together, go on motorcycle journeys, wrangle your chatty pups, and cracked the code on Mongolian beef. I don’t usually know anything about my friends’ relationships with their dads, but I know yours was striking and remarkable. In the short time you had together as best pals, you co-wrote a wonderful story.

So anyway. It’s not my last message to you by any means, but it’s one I wish I could have sent to you ages ago. Only a few achieve immortality, and your legacy is carried by all of us that you touched. 

Round 2, Let’s Rock!

♥ Cool Matt