Postcard Entries

Postcard Entry #1 - January 18th, 2011
"Here Comes the Sun"

Today in my Digital Storytelling class, we had watched videos on memorials of people. This reminds me of my late great friend Ben Johnston, who tragically died last year on April 26th, 2010. In one of the videos we had watched today, the song "Here Comes the Sun" played, and it reminded me of his visitation. His favourite bands happened to be Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. I had met Ben in 2nd Grade at Winston Churchill Public School where one of the days our classes (there were two 2nd grade classes, mine was a split class) had a day to spend with each other while the 3rd graders were doing some tests. I remember him liking dinosaurs and wild animals a lot. He was born in South Africa, this could be part of the reason why he liked these sort of things. He moved across Chatham the next year and we didn't see each other again until high school at Chatham-Kent Secondary School. We never became good friends until Grade 11, when I joined his clique of friends via my friends at the time. We had many classes together after this and gradually became better friends. In Grade 12, we had our first period as a spare period and often went to places around the area to eat. We both were fortunate to have vehicles although I was older than him by eight months. Over the last few years of high school, we did things outside of school such as parties, video games, etc. After high school, we once again found ourselves going our separate ways as he went to the University of Windsor for Computer Programming and I had stayed in Chatham for Accounting. We still had fun during breaks and the last few summers. In 2010, our exams had just finished and we went to his cousin's house to hang out for the night, and had fun. This was the very last time I had seen him before his death. Unfortunately, the way I found out was through another good friend and Facebook. To this day, I still don't know what happened but he was found in his bed that morning....

My story is based on my late friend Ben Johnston who died in 2010.  He will be missed by his family, friends, and associates.  From public school, to high school and the last few years of our friendship, we grew as friends and would still be having fun to this day, if tragedies did not exist.  RIP Ben.