In Memoriam | To Chris Wood

A Portrait of Chris Wood as a Young Man, uploaded to his Facebook page on June 18, 2020.

Hey buddy,

I’m not sure if you’ll ever be able to read this email. Or if it’ll ever be excavated hundred years from now by an overzealous student trying to read emails from the past….

I got a call early this morning. It was from a mutual friend. She left a voice mail to call her before I log on Facebook. I was intrigued, to say the least. I called. She told me. She also said she didn’t want me to find out about your death via Facebook. “That’s not a way to find out,” she said. She was right. Her trembling voice was rather comforting to me, nonetheless.

I don’t know the circumstances surrounding your death. All I know is someone was worried and didn’t hear from you in few days…and you were found in your apartment. All I can think of is my text to you this past Monday. I finally snapped out of my COVID-19 haze and realized I hadn’t heard from you in a while. Knowing your only outlet to the internet, after you lost your teaching job, was your local library…I worried. It must’ve been very hard to not be able to contact anyone, or hear from anyone…it must’ve been lonely. Very lonely. Isolated. By yourself. In your own apartment. With everything being closed…I sent you a text: “How are you doing?” and I went back to my “COVID-19 brain”…did not worry that I did not hear from you…I thought, “Probably you’ll text back when you text back”…boy, was I wrong.

My grad dorm room was right above yours. We met by you gently complaining about that tapping noise from my room almost every night. It was the wooden bed not being even, generating a noise every time I turned. We both laughed, and an instant friendship ensued. Many times, you’d call me to pick you up from the local bar. You had dreams of grandiose movie plots and theatre plays. I’d hear you repeat them over and over, especially when you had too much to drink, and the ideas were overflowing in abundance. I didn’t mind listening back then. I still don’t mind.

You believed in me. You were my biggest champion. I was shy and self-conscious about my accent. You saw through it. I admired your grasp of the English language and sure enough, later on you became an English professor. I guess, in life, we fall into what comes easy to us, until our dreams are fulfilled. Shortly before graduation, you wanted to go back and get married.

When you heard about Stephanie’s death, via Facebook, after I posted it on my wall, you commented: “What’s happening to us?” Before her it was Steve. His death was all over the news. He died young. Way too young, much like Stephanie. We didn’t realize it was her that was in “Everwood.” She was found dead, alone, in her apartment. You and I talked a day later on the phone. Many of us remained single. Some got married. Few made the right choices. Many made the wrong choices. Some got out, and some remained married to the wrong choice…yours dissolved. “Are we meant to be all alone?” you asked. I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how to answer. “It’s our f%^& up generation,” you added. Wait. Did you say that or did I? Did this conversation ever happen? Everything is a haze these days.

Soon, we will find out details about your death, and what happened, if we’ll ever know. It’ll be therapeutic, somehow, at least to all the ones that knew you. You’re gone. Not sure if you have a way to read this email, but if you do, will you please read it? I’m rambling, I know. I just want you to know that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not in our young minds. Not ever.

I had grandiose dreams too. Fly you to California. Work on bringing this newspaper to the next level. Make it so successful, help local journalism all over the U.S…and maybe the world? Ha! You wanted to come to CA so badly. I said, “Let me get this thing off the grounds first, and I’ll send after you.” Sorry it’s taken me seven years. We’re still struggling…you know….we talked about it. Ah, how I wish you were here. I wish you got to see CA one more time. We’re still young…there’s still time.

Will you read my email? No need to reply. Just know you’re missed, even when we don’t talk. Will you read my email?

PS I left this email as is, hoping you’d see it in the ether and copy-edit in your mind while reading it.

Chris Wood was a writer, director, a dear friend, and above all a great human being. Today, ColoradoBoulevard.net lost a star and the skies gained one.