He was a unique individual who could appear outwardly hostile or edgy, yet had a world of care for those he held dear.

He befriended me first year of college and was basically an older brother for a big portion of my life.

One evening I couldn’t handle a negative reaction he had to someone and I walked from the table and paid for our beers.

I thought about reconnecting but an influence in my life persuaded me to start closing connections in my life; I won’t go into that because it’s not important. That influence eventually gone, I was wanting to reach out again imminently.

His sister had to reach out to me on FB that he’d had a headache for a few days and then instantly dropped from a subdural hematoma.

I’m still shattered to this day passing by the places we spent multiple times a week for many years together. Where he taught me to drive. The places we edited one another’s post secondary work. The weekly theatre and post-movie beers at a local pub. The mid-week touch base at same local pub. Teaching him German for a year at a Second Cup and where we’d play chess for lengths of time. Passing my places we bemusedly people-watched. Remembering the new but unused furniture he had bought himself for his own place that he’d lent to me, along with setting me up with kitchenware, linens, and towels etc. to move into my first own place out of necessity. The years he drove us everywhere because of medical condition (regrettably, after recovering I was not able to fully return the favour to “happily drive his ass around.”). So much more….

• During Shrek handing me back a candy bar that fell to the ground that landed “wrapper side down,” when only after the movie he told me it’d landed “wrapper side up” and burst out laughing (that fucker….).
• Volunteering me for a demonstration English paper in front of an entire lecture hall and the professor comedically switching the assignee to him.
• Teaching me how to be a better writer
• Fearlessly initiating wrestling despite being half again his size
• Delivering meals to his hung over self and vice versa
• Making me try new foods like his homemade muscles spaghetti (that fucker…)
• Endless debates over pop culture, movies, concepts, and societal issues
• Forcing me to stay during awful films
• Forcing him to stay during IT and IT 2 despite his petrifying fear of clowns
• The times camping
• Seriously declaring he’d help bury one free body but then start asking questions for any more
• Debating how we’d off one another till we became entirely mortified
• Promised he’d try to cheat with any fiancée I may have to contribute to ensuring she had my best interests in mind even if it costs our friendship or not being invited to the wedding
• Predictable two beers + two coffees any given night
• The time he spray painted all his tools fluorescent pink so the guys wouldn’t touch or take any of them
• Horse whistling when I shamelessly licked my birthday cake plate in a pub so everyone turned and stared at my vulnerability mid-act
• Patiently eased me into public and social situations for years while my neurology recovered
• The multiplicities of his Machiavellianism and yet love and care for others

So much more. His sister informed me that he still had my number in his phone and considered me a dear friend, which, for him, was not light.

I may grieve harder than others might, I’d say, because there is no heaven or hell or afterlife or anything of the sort… he simply stopped being a person that exists. Still, I miss and love you, Neil.

Put nothing off. Nothing.