Two years have passed since Dillon’s death, and I never wrote you to express how deeply it affected me. To be honest, I wasn’t really able to bring my feelings about it into writing for a long time- I’m horrible at dealing with death and tend to internalize it and shove it away, so losing Dillon was especially hard for me to confront. I’m thnking about Dillon and I feel like I should let you know how important he was to me. I met Dillon before we started 9th grade and I was at a pretty tumultuous point in my life. I am not sure that I ever talked to Dillon about my own stuff that was going on at the time, but I didn’t have to- he had such an exuberant personality that the stuff that upset me would just seem trivial. He made me know that I was important to him at a point when I felt completely lost; even before he passed away, Dillon’s friendship stood out to me as being particularly special. The fact is, though, that I think this was everyone’s relationship with him; he made me, and made everyone, happy by virtue of his presence. To spend time with Dillon was a reminder that you were loved, which is why, in turn, the love we all had for him was so deep. My family and I are all sending our love, and I’ll keep remembering Dillon.
