My friend, Shep — Matthew Shepard — got engaged this week.
I thought it might be a bittersweet moment for me.
Shep has found love and will undoubtedly be happy for the rest of his life, but it also signals a likely move farther away from me. His fiancée, Nicole, lives in Massachusetts, about an hour or two farther away.
He’s inexplicably chosen the love of his life over me.
We will still attend Patriots games together, of course, and play the occasional round of golf, and we’ll find other reasons to connect, but it will likely mean I’ll see him less often, and I’ll miss our long drives to the football games.
Spending four hours traveling back and forth to the game with Shep is nearly as fun as the game itself.
Surprisingly, despite all of this, I’m not feeling so bittersweet, because I’m just too happy for my friend.
Shep has been one of the most important people in my life over the last 25 years.
I met Shep when he hired me and my friend, Bengi, to DJ his wedding to his first wife, way back in the summer of 2000. I liked him right from the start, but it wasn’t until a year after his wedding, when I saw him at another wedding, that I finally connected with him and his then-wife and became fast friends.
We soon began attending Patriots games together, and through those games, I got to know his cousin, Erin, and her husband, Tony, who are my friends today.
It was Tony’s extra pair of season tickets that allowed us to attend games. Today, I own those tickets.
I also became friendly with several of his other friends and coworkers, including a third Matt who eventually brought me into his company, which has led to additional work and new clients since then.
Shep has indirectly led me to corporate profits.
Over the years, Shep and I have attended hundreds of Patriots games together, including eight AFC Championship Games, which is kind of astounding.
The Patriots were 7-1 in those games.
We’ve tailgated with groups small and large and enjoyed enough football adventures and mishaps to fill a book, and maybe someday, I will write that book.
We outlined it once on the way home from a game.
I’ve also gotten to know Shep’s dad, Everrett, and played golf with him, too.
When Elysha and I married in 2006, Shep was a groomsman.
When I started to doubt my ability to write fiction in 2004, after writing the first 25,000 words of a bunch of terrible novels, I started to resign myself to the idea that maybe I’m built only for memoir and essays.
Maybe I wasn’t a fiction writer after all.
Then Shep invited me to begin writing Dungeons & Dragons adventures for him and our friends. When I declined, because it sounded like an atrocious idea, he pressed me.
“You’re not writing anything else right now, so why not write for us? Do what you said you’d do.”
You need friends like this in your life.
So for about a year, I wrote D&D adventures for my friends, and somehow, that writing and my newfound audience restored my confidence and faith that fiction might still be possible for me. Eventually, I decided to make the leap back into the world of made-up stories, so I called Shep one day to tell him I was going to try my hand at writing a novel again.
“Write both,” he said. “D&D campaigns and fiction.”
I explained to him that although D&D was technically fiction, I didn’t love the work and wanted to turn my full attention to a novel.
He was probably a little disappointed, but he offered to be my first reader if I ever wrote something I liked, and he has been that person ever since.
Three years later, I published my first novel, “Something Missing,” with Doubleday, and my life was changed forever.
It’s not wrong to say that Shep helped save my writing career. I’m an internationally bestselling author of six (and soon-to-be seven) novels and three books of nonfiction because Shep kicked my ass when it needed kicking.
I’ve also attended Shep’s many “Guys’ Weekends,” where we played video games, poker, and sometimes, blessedly, actual sports. Shep and I once violently collided in a flag football game. My head hit his chest, knocking me unconscious for a minute or two, giving me a concussion, while also breaking two of Shep’s ribs.
After a few minutes of recovery, we played on.
We were stupid people back then.
I’ve played many rounds of golf with Shep over the years, and he’s gotten to know many of my friends in the meantime, too.
He’s actually a little famous in my friend group as the guy who takes nothing seriously and says what he thinks. I also famously say exactly what I think, but I think Shep might do it even more aggressively than I do.
He’s a delight to be around.
He’s a little less like this today, probably thanks in part to his fiancée, Nicole, but he’s still Shep.
More than once, I’ve had to threaten to call Gillette Stadium security when Shep’s belittlement of opposing fans got out of hand.
Those poor souls from Green Bay… they traveled all the way from Wisconsin to Massachusetts to see a game with their two small boys on a Monday night. Shep was not happy that they were sitting in front of us and let them know it.
Aggressively.
I’ve stood by Shep in good times and bad. I’ve watched him raise an amazing daughter. I’ve watched him do his work exceptionally well.
I even officiated the wedding of his ex-wife’s second marriage.
Oddly, she married one of Shep’s close friends.
Then I watched him meet his fiancée, Nicole, by accident, thinking they lived in the same state and not realizing that Mansfield, MA and Mansfield, CT were two very different places many, many miles apart. Even though they should’ve called it off then, they kept on texting, then dating, then fell in love, and are now engaged.
It should be bittersweet for me, and perhaps when Shep eventually moves away, I’ll feel the sting, but for now, I’m so happy for my friend.
He’s found someone he loves, and she loves him.
Maybe even more than I love him.
Shep gets to turn the page on a new chapter in his life, and I think it’s a good lesson for us all. There was a time, before Nicole, when Shep vowed to never get married again, for lots of good and maybe some bad reasons. But he also put himself out there despite this reticence, dared to open his heart again, and found a happiness and a love I don’t think he ever expected to find again in his lifetime.
I like to think back on the Shep of yesteryear, who didn’t see a future like the one he’s enjoying today. I like to remember that former version of my friend, a little sad, a little hopeless, and a little angry, looking to punch the world in the face at every turn, and then I like to look at him now.
It should remind all of us that if we’re willing to step forward, take a chance, and try again, life can change.
There are no guarantees that it will happen quickly or ever, of course, but without that hopeful, daring, courageous step forward, nothing ever will.
Shep will undoubtedly be annoyed to see me declare him an inspiration to anyone who has lost faith, given up, or closed off the world. He tries so hard not to try. He works so damn hard to do just enough to get by. He deflects, diverts, and dodges kind and complimentary words whenever possible.
But sometimes you can’t help but be who you are and who others believe you to be, even if it’s something you might disavow or despise.
My friend, Matthew Shepard, is engaged. He found a woman to love, and she loved him back.
It’s inspiring.
Joyous.
The happiest of days.
Until the Patriots win another Super Bowl, of course.
