Pierre-Henri Cade [1966-2003]

Dear PH,

Today is the five year anniversary of your death. They say that sometimes it helps to write the dead a letter to aid in the healing but I never did that and the time has flown and I never really wanted to let you go never really wanted to forget anything. Sucks I have such a bad memory but I’ve done everything possible to hang onto as many memories of our times together and my memories of you as I can.

I recently found the bag that your mother made you filled with lavender that you gave me for my dresser, I thought I had lost it, it was in a place I never look, I thought it was gone forever I thought I had looked for it everywhere.

I like to believe that if you hadn’t have taken your own life that everything would have been easier. I’d like to think that if your death wasn’t one of the only ones I’ve had to deal with in thirty years of life that it wouldn’t have taken me until last year to finally remove your email address and to have finally taken your phone number out of my cell phone.

But the fact remains, that in so many ways you keep me here and I need those memories. The really tough ones that peek through the cloud of shock that I was buried under and the sweet and tender ones that I love to tell and people who love me tolerate hearing over and over and over and over and over again.

When I want to give up for good, when I honestly believe I am capable of inflicting this never ending pain on everyone you flood me. An image too real of the car, the hose, the tape, the bottle, the pills the receipt the lone book and you dead. B coming up to my place at 8:15pm after N had left with M to be told separate and change us all forever.

The letter your family sent us was so nice and touching and I read it from time to time but one from you would have been nice. I like to think I’d leave one. I left a rather short one in grade 11 but it was a note none the less. I guess this is where the anger and the whys come in. The “YOU KNEW I SUFFERED FROM DEPRESSION YOU ASSHOLE”, the “YOU KNEW IF ANYONE YOU COULD HAVE TALKED TO ME”. Depression can be such a selfish disorder.

I didn’t and don’t really spend much time angry at you. I understand man. But that has never made it any easier.

When I get to see you again I won’t start with with why I’ll start by poking you in the belly because I wanna see you smile and laugh and I want it in slow motion. Like a slide show I want to show you, I want you to have a birds eye view of how much our times together meant to me. It would start with cheese. The night you showed up at my apartment door with nothing but a tray of your favourite cheeses. No bread, no wine, just cheese and you and your stories of how every time you would house-sit for M & B that you would break something and how funny it was but really it wasn’t funny and our friendship started right there. The New Years we spent just the two of us, all the books and Caramel Macchiatos you’d bring me just because you were thinking of me, the endless hours of trying to teach me ‘real’ French that wasn’t dirty. Remember the time my I/T band blew out deep in Stanley Park and I had to sit on your handle bars for at least five maybe more kilometers of what was supposed to be a run. My ass hurt and you couldn’t see you weren’t wearing a helmet it wasn’t safe and I couldn’t stop laughing. HA remember when YOU wanted to go see Crossroads, I still have that ticket stub. I wonder what you’d think of Britney now. And Lance won not four Tour de France titles but seven and thanks to you being a FRENCH MAN who loved that arrogant but kick ass bastard I love him and I try to LIVESTRONG.

As fate would have it, the last time I ever got to spend time with you one on one you had just gotten back from your bike trip, you made it through Tijanua, Mexico and you came back in love. I left work early that day, and if I had not left the building with various different exits the exact way I did I would have missed you heading down the stairs towards me and I didn’t know until you told me that you were coming just to see me. I was heading towards my work provided councilor, on yet another hunt to find help with my depression. We got caught up on everything and who knew that would be our last meeting. I did see you again in group settings but ended up on a date with a guy I already knew was an asshole on your Birthday when you were again watching M & B’s place and came up to visit me and thank me for the card I had left by the door, you weren’t home from wherever you were yet when I left. You died just over a month later and I don’t regret much in life but I will never forgive myself for going out that night what I wouldn’t give to have had that time with you.

The legs of some cyclists, their helmets used to have me convinced you weren’t really gone and it was all some sick joke. I miss so much about you but I think I miss your acceptance most, the size of your heart, the sound of your laugh, the way you looked in a toque. I just want one more day.