The IP Weekly

Sometime this past Saturday night many of us received a similar message about the untimely death of Matthew Perry. I was at a concert when my niece and my daughter, both 19 years old, texted at almost the same time. The texts were shared amongst the people in my party forcing each of us to stop what we were doing and let the news sink in. We lose famous people everyday for a variety of reasons, few have the impact of Matthew Perry.

The iconic sitcom Friends ended in 2004, the year my daughter was born. While Perry had a career beyond Friends, nothing he did would ever come close to matching the popularity and cultural significance he reached as Chandler Bing. His portrayal of Bing was funny and vulnerable at the same time. We saw ourselves in that character in ways we didn’t in the other male characters on the show. He was both silly and heartfelt, real and ridiculous. He was the friend we all wanted in our lives and the kind of friend we wanted to be. That show, his character, got many of us through difficult times as the perfect escape from whatever ailed us. It was akin to the smell of warm cookies when you enter your home or the warmth of your favorite blanket, it was peace and joy, laughter and a good cry.

Of course, Perry was not Chandler Bing in real life. Perry struggled with addiction for much of his adult life. His public acknowledgement of his illness last year only made us root for him more. He hadn’t truly been in the spotlight for two decades, and yet we never felt far from him. He had been through so much, struggled emotionally, mentally and physically, but we saw the innocence in his eyes. His life was filled with pain, but none of the horrors ever seemed to dull the spark we all saw whenever he looked our way.

So there we all were on Saturday night furiously searching our phones hoping this was just another in a series of idiotic hoaxes. For a little while we forgot about the senseless tragedies taking place in Israel, the conflicts raging on college campuses, the endless political infighting that doesn’t quit. For a little while we all sat together and mourned the loss of our own innocence, the loss of our smile, the loss of Matthew Perry.