Sergeant at Arms
When I opened the email on Tuesday morning, I was paralyzed. My friend, mentor and fellow Toastmaster, Marcel Boudreau, had died in a car accident the day before. His forty-second birthday is in a few weeks.
For most of the week I’ve found it difficult to breath and sleep knowing that I will never again have the opportunity to exchange ideas with Marcel. I’ve been fluctuating between coherent and confused states of mind. I’d guess that this is what all of Marcel’s friends are going through. I can’t imagine what his family is going through.
Today, the Toastmasters club of which I am a member (Causeurs Sussex Speakers) gathered at our usual meeting time to support each other. It was amazingly therapeutic to be with my good friends, each of whom Marcel took specific time to get to know. We shared stories, laughed and cried. I had two stories in particular I wanted to share and wasn’t able to get the words out of my mouth. Instead, I’ll blog them.
When Marcel was Toastmaster of a meeting last November, he decided to pick the theme ‘take a chance’ and lived the theme by not contacting those with roles. I was among those people and two days before the meeting became concerned that something was wrong. I was the second person to call him to find out what was going on. Marcel was pleased with himself and he was particularly proud that his experiment succeeded and enjoyed that Dave, the General Evaluator that day, pointed out how lucky he was that it had worked. In an email following the meeting, Marcel included this quote:
“Take a chance! Life is a chance. The person that goes the furthest is generally the one willing to do and dare. The ’sure thing’ boat never gets far from the shore.”
– Dale Carnegie
On April 25, as elections for the 2008-2009 executive were approaching, I asked Marcel if I could nominate him for a position. I was being selfish. I was the only nomination for one of the positions and felt that for more reasons than I can describe here, but that those who know Marcel understand, he belonged on the executive. He took the request very seriously and suggested that we go for a walk to talk about it. We were a few seconds into the walk when he said ‘Do you always walk this fast? You have to slow down or you’re going to miss everything there is to see, smell and experience.‘ We walked for twenty minutes. It was a walk I usually do in about five minutes and I had never really experienced the feeling of being passed by other pedestrians on the sidewalk. He walked completely past his office, to mine, so that we could talk about his nomination and how important it was to him to do the most with the position. We talked about public speaking, life and family. We talked about the woman at Bell Pastry who always kept his favourite muffin set aside for him each day just as he liked it — not wrapped in plastic. On May 1, he accepted the nomination and was elected to the position of Sergeant at Arms.
Causseurs Sussex Speakers is notorious for its free-exchange of hugs. I will miss Marcel’s hugs — especially because he’s the only other member pushing six-foot-four. I will miss joking around with him, including the time when I spontaneously selected him as ‘the trouble student’ when I led a meeting themed on teachers that had an impact on us. I will miss seeing his smiling and curious face when I deliver a speech. I will miss talking about what to do with long arms during a speech. I will miss all of his insights and I will miss the opportunity of working with him as part of the executive.
Marcel is one of the teachers that had a big impact on me. Thank you, Marcel, for everything you taught me, including one of life’s greatest lessons: slow down or you’ll miss everything there is to see, smell and experience.
For a thin guy, I sure cast a giant shadow.
