Head Tale

(Chris liked this photo I snapped of him after a 503 class so much that he asked me to send it to him for possible use in his wedding album.)

It seems like a cruel joke that I'm in the midst of posting eulogies
I've done for my grandparents and then I get the news that Chris Dixon,
a PhD student at UWO, passed away yesterday morning.  Chris had been dealing
with health issues for awhile but had been doing better so his passing was unexpected.

Shea often says that she spent her childhood going to funerals, mostly for older relatives who had passed but she also had a kindergarten classmate who was killed in a motorbike accident so she experienced the loss of someone her own age very early. 

I, on the other hand, could count the funerals I went to when I was younger on one hand.  I was also unbelievably
fortunate to have not had any friends my own age die until only recently (even given the stupidity that growing up in small town Saskatchewan engenders.  I've had friends drive drunk into semi-trucks and get hit by trains when sober, fall off moving cars and into campfires, get spinal “stingers” that left them temporarily unable to walk while playing sports.  But no one I knew who was my age has died.)  

The first friend I lost who was close to my age was a few years ago – a young writer in Calgary
(who went by the nom de plume of “EatLardFudge” so you can tell why I
liked him!) was in his mid-30's when he had a heart attack and died. I had just turned 30 and this was a shocking development.  “Hmm, people in my decade sometimes die” I remember thinking, surprised at this cosmic revelation.

And now Chris Dixon (who was 34 if I'm doing my math right and which is the same age as I'll be in two weeks) has died as well, earning the dubious distinction of being the first friend of mine who was born within a year of myself to have died.  I know that the older you get, the more this will happen.  But as I said, I've lived in a bit of a bubble and thought it would be sometime in my 50's or 60's when this started happening, not when I was in my early 30's.  So this news hit me harder than you might expect the death of someone who you only crossed paths with briefly during “a year abroad” (as I think of time at FIMS).

[Edit: just to be clear, I have known people a few years older than myself who have died.  And younger people as well.  But no one who I was particularly close to and always in an “acquaintance” rather than a “friend” role.]

There are other reasons besides our common age why this hit me harder than I would've expected.  I attended a writer's conference quite a few years ago. After the AGM, I went up to a well-known
Saskatchewan writer and during the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I looked up to him as a mentor.  He  replied
that he didn't want to be rude but he wasn't sure what I meant – he had
never critiquing my writing and in fact, he didn't really know me
beyond being casual acquaintances.  I said that I thought of it as more
of a “mentorship-at-a-distance” role – I learned a lot from
talking to him, watching how he handled himself in various
situations, how he dealt with people. 

Although we were a bit closer than
I was with that unnamed writer, Chris filled a similar role for me at FIMS.  He was always very level-headed, giving and thoughtful in all of my
interactions with him.  Maybe it was because he was in the PhD program, maybe it was because of his health, maybe it was simply because of who he was as a person.  But he always seemed so much older than me and I was also shocked when I realised that he was my age, first at FIMS and again, hearing this news today. 

I'm rambling all over the place here but I also wanted to mention that I'm fascinated by the idea of people's “Digital Footprints” – the traces we leave, intentionally and otherwise, via our online activities.  I see that Chris' name has appeared on this blog a few times over the past year.  The search engine doesn't find it but Chris also regularly posted comments in response to my threads on librarianship, music and Ontario. 

Another form of your digital footprint is the e-mails you've sent (especially if you're a hoarder like me whose kept pretty much every e-mail I've received over the past ten years! )

One of the last e-mails I got from Chris hints at his struggles with his health but also captures his sense of humour:

The reference to the raised coffee cup was an ongoing joke between us.  On numerous occasions, I invited Chris to join me at the Grad Club for beer.  And on numerous occasions, he had to remind me that he no longer drank alcohol because of his health issues.

Chris left another digital footprint as well.  He had a Facebook page and it knocked the wind out of me to see that his last “status update” was “Chris is happy that he spent the day with his family.”  This post was made two days ago on Sunday.  I think that single line sums up what kind of a person Chris was, what his priorities were, better than this hastily drawn, semi-lucid, quasi-eulogy ever could.  A follow-up from his wife Sandra on his Facebook wall explains Chris' passing for anyone who may stumble across it and also to advise everyone to live life to the fullest – something I once again tell myself I'll do, even as I know that there will be roadblocks – monotonous work duties, choosing to watch TV instead of watching the sunset, going to sleep instead of going for a walk.)

Last year, at library school, I used to do a recurring feature called “Classmate of the Day” where I cited someone who had helped me out or said something funny or had just been a good person in general.  I believe Chris even “won” the award once or twice himself.  But what better time to bring it out of hiatus than now.

Classmate of the Day:  Chris Dixon