Letter: Every day say how much you love them
By Letters to the editor
To The Editor:
In memory of Briar Novitski
Thank you so much to all of you who organized and attended Briar’s Celebration of Life at Nelson’s Lakeside Park on Sunday, July 14th , 2024.
The loving appreciations for Briar you expressed at the open mic were beautiful and heartbreaking. We were enormously moved by the grief and love experienced by so many whose lives he touched.
Over three hundred came.
Briar would have been absolutely bowled over to see what a huge impact he made on his community, but we saw his optimism, humour, intelligence, dogged determination to succeed, and idiosyncratic style sense.
He was so committed to improving at basketball that he often woke at 5:30 a.m. to catch the early bus so he could practice for an hour before school. He lived by his own code: don’t just talk about it, do it.
At sixteen he was really coming into his own, excelling at sports and academics and charging ahead with plans and excitement. He treasured his trip to Japan last year and looked forward to living there. We were so pleased to watch Briar begin to emerge as a man. It is incomprehensible that we’ll never see him again.
Briar would be proud to know that we’re planning a basketball bursary and a tournament in his name. gofundme.com/briar-novitski
Please share with us photos and videos you took at Briar’s Celebration of Life and your anecdotes about him at briarnovitski.ca
There’s a bittersweet irony when we celebrate someone’s life when they’re no longer here to appreciate how much they meant to us.
Let’s change that. Make sure your parents, your children, your friends know how much you love them every day.
Take a leaf from Briar’s book and just do it.
In love and grief, Paul, Tanya, and Callum, Winlaw, BC
