For the past few days I've been thinking about how to write this but every time I touch my keyboard, I become overwhelmed with emotion. It is difficult to find the right words to accurately express just how special you were and the impact you had on my life. You were someone who kept me grounded, someone with which I could share thoughts I had never been able to share before, and someone who has brought an immeasurable amount of happiness into my life.
Over the last 7 months, I had the pleasure of getting to know the well-mannered, mature, kind and incredibly witty person you were. You never failed to crack me up with your jokes, goofy facial expressions and crazy dancing. You were also so knowledgeable and had an aptitude for learning — one of the first qualities I noticed about you. You were such a fast learner and found ways to incorporate fun facts from your engineering courses into our conversations. You had so much potential and I know you would have gone very far in your life.
During our last term in Waterloo, we spent nearly every day together. I will miss learning new recipes with you (especially from chef John), making overnight oats with an excessive amount of peanut butter, making the mango smoothies you loved and eating your perfectly cooked medium rare steaks. I will miss our daily walks — the walks that helped us relax and destress from school. I will miss our midnight adventures to Farah's to buy the slushies you were craving. I will miss learning new Chinese words with you and singing to your mando playlist at the top of our lungs early in the morning. I will miss jumping around to edm and teaching you how to shuffle (your footwork definitely still needed a lot of work). I will miss talking about our goals together, whether it was our morning routine of telling each other what we wanted to accomplish that day or talking about our career aspirations. We supported each other through school, interviews, our mental and physical health and most importantly, we helped each other grow and improve.
I will forever cherish the last day we spent together. We made your favorite dessert (with the guidance of my sister because we were both amateur bakers), I played piano for you and was accompanied by your random key presses, and we played many competitive games of ping pong.
One day, I will join you and we can go golfing like we promised we would and finish those last two episodes of Breaking Bad we had, along with checking off the rest of the things we still wanted to do together. But for now, I hope you're happy, relaxed, and kicking everyone's butt in chess like the true grand master you are.
I miss you so much Aidan. Fly high bb.