in memory of Mélanie
This Tuesday, I received the news that my penpal and dear friend Mélanie had passed away earlier this month. Andy and I were both heart-broken to receive this news; although we’d only spend a few days with her, she left a big impression on us with her smile and laugh and gentle wisdom. I first received a postcard from her in August 2010 thanks to the luck of the draw that is Postcrossing. She had seen in my profile a desire for LGBTQ+ themed cards and sent me one from the Cabaret Mado, and that sparked a long correspondence. We bonded over our shared love of postcards and snail mail, over her love of Monarch butterflies and the delicate milkweed plant that nourishes them on their journey from Canada to Mexico. I was entranced with her career as a sign language interpreter, learning for the first real time about la Langue de Signes Québécoise.
In March 2015, Andy and I traveled first to Montréal where she lived and then to Toronto where I was attending a professional conference. Our first idea was to meet for a coffee or lunch, but we got along like a house on fire and ended up spending several days together. Mélanie invited us to go ice fishing, which was one of the coldest times of my life, but I was kept warm by her laugh and the hilarity that we enjoyed, both of us too icked out to bait the hook with a bucket of near-ice-cold minnows and forcing Andy to do it instead. We caught nothing that day but the flames of a friendship that would endure years and international borders.
In July 2017, she and her friend Isabelle visited us in San Francisco. We had a deliriously great time, showing them around the city and taking them on a trip to California’s wine country. I will always remember her delight in seeing the California poppy growing on the side of the road and in the parks. She secretly collected seeds to take home and diligently sowed them in her balcony garden the following spring, taking with her a memory of California.
My final chance to see her was in June 2018 when my father and I met for a week’s visit in Montréal. We saw Mélanie for dinner, which was all we had planned, but she accompanied us on our trip to wine country, in Quebec’s Cantons de l’Est. She was such an incredible sport with our wandering the backroads of Quebec’s wine country and stopping at strange restaurants and stores looking for postcards and other ephemera.
I had known a bit about her struggle with breast cancer, but she didn’t talk about it much. Instead, she sent me packets of postcards she had found from thriftstores. She wrote notes on the backs of each one — on post-it notes, so they could be resent! — telling me why she’d chosen each of them. We exchanged letters and postcards, messages, and videos. We exchanged our friendship and our love.
Mélanie Roy, age 47, left behind a bereft family and scores of friends, collaborators, and colleagues. Andy and I are very lucky to have counted ourselves among their number. We miss her dearly, already. I know I will think of her every time I see the orange and black flashes of a Monarch butterfly or the dancing orange petals of a California poppy. Above, I’ve uploaded nearly every postcard she addressed to me over the eleven years I knew her.
Merci infiniement, Mélanie, pour ton amitié, ton amour, et ton ésprit inoubliable.
