Letter: 'The kind of person you only meet once in a lifetime': Remembering Grey

Dear Grey,

I spent the past couple days hoping you’d call and wake me up from this weird reality I now find myself in. For the past week, I have been at loss of words, fully knowing that nothing I could possibly say would be worthy enough to disrupt the emptiness of these pages. Truly, you were the kind of person you only meet once in a lifetime. That is, if one’s lucky enough to meet you, and wise enough to become close with you. 

Luckily, for that part, I think we did it right.

For the past three years, I was honored to have you as a close friend—to cherish together moments we did not know were our lasts, to make the most out of this crazy ride that our four years at Duke have been. Little did we know that the moment we met in our sophomore year, so randomly and unexpectedly, would shape our times here. That moment, we would begin a friendship so pure and genuine we thought it would last for a lifetime. We laughed, we cried, we stayed up all night simply to talk about anything and everything. We made all the bad decisions that made Duke so fun, and all the good ones that made it memorable, meaningful. 

To say that this hurts and that you will not be forgotten doesn’t even begin to unravel how much you meant to me, to our friend group. Grey, you were a unique soul who dared to think, to have such an insatiable hunger to learn from those around you. Now, as a friend brilliantly put, I will remember you more as a teacher. I only wish you had known how much of an impact you had in our lives too.

You believed in us more than we could ever believe in ourselves, in a selfless manner that made you an inspiring and uplifting presence to those close to you. And from that, you inspired such confidence in us that we learned how to actually believe in ourselves too. 

There are very few people out there who would ever be able to do that, and even fewer who would even consider doing it. 

Grey, I would like to thank you. Thank you for teaching me more about myself than most people have. Thank you for the nights at Krafthouse, the night-long conversations at McDonald’s. Thank you for always being there, for being true.