As I sit at the computer, trying to write something profound to say in the midst of this situation, my heart is extremely heavy over Cory Monteith's passing.
Saturday night, I was on my way home from L.A., getting ready to pull off the freeway with my family in Valencia, when I was scrolling through my Twitter timeline (don't worry, I wasn't driving). I saw several tweets from people freaking out that Cory Monteith had died. I just rolled my eyes and got really annoyed, because usually it's from a source that no one has ever heard of and everyone believes it right away because they see it on the internet. Calm down people, is all I was thinking at the moment. I figured it was just another hoax from some dude living in the basement of his parents' house and didn't think anything of it. We went into Wal-Mart and did what we needed to do, and I kept looking at tweets. And pretty soon, Cory's death was starting to spread. I saw the confirmation on The Hollywood Reporter and soon after...E! News; pretty reputable companies when it comes to true facts and details, and that's when I figured it really must be true. I couldn't believe it.
I was a really big "gleek" the first two seasons of the show, because finally it was a show all about music and being the underdogs of the school, which was something I could relate to, being that I was in choir for two years. Cory is the main reason I kept watching Glee, even when I started to get a little bored with it (at least for awhile) and felt like it was the same thing over and over again. I was rooting for his character to pull through. I wasn't always a fan of "Finn" or the choices he made, but I was a fan of Cory; a good actor, who seemed like an even better guy.
He always seemed like such a nice, down-to-earth guy, and from all of the interviews and reports I've been reading over the past couple days, he was exactly that. No one has had a single bad thing to say about him, which just really makes the whole thing even harder. He had checked into rehab for a drug problem awhile back, and had seemed to be doing better. Him and Lea Michele seemed extremely happy together every time they were photographed out and about, and he just seemed to be in a really good place. And then this happens.
I'll never be able to make sense of deaths that just seem to happen too soon in life, especially when they seem to be fluke incidents, but I know God has a reason for it in there somewhere. That's the only I thing I can think that would pull someone through a situation like this. Faith in God. He was only 31 and was just getting his life together and figuring out what he wanted, and in one day, he's gone just like *that*. I can't imagine the pain Lea and his family must be going through right now, and they will definitely be in my prayers.
I never had the opportunity to meet Cory, and now I am really wishing I'd been able to. I only have a couple real memories to share of coming in contact with him. I saw him from afar on the red carpet at the People's Choice Awards in 2010, I think it was, and I think this picture seems to sum him up pretty well. My parents and I also took a tour of Paramount Studios (where Glee films) and our tour guide was telling us that when the cast was around filming, Cory would come up to everyone and say 'hi' if he was around, and that always spoke volumes to me. Most actors who come in contact with tour groups would never take the time to do that because they're just focused on what they need to do and don't want the distractions that groups can bring. It just always gave me a pretty good impression of the kind of guy he was. After that, I had added him to my "list of people to meet." Now, I'll never get the chance. And I think it's really sad that sometimes we don't actually realize how special someone was until we do our research after they're gone, with celebrities, relatives or friends. When we realize that we don't have them anymore to use as a resource and ask them ourselves, it makes our research that much harder, because we can't learn from them anymore. It wakes me up to wanting to find out who a person is before they leave this earth.
Cory, you are definitely missed. The entertainment industry lost so much on July 13th, but I'm pretty sure his memory will live on forever for all that he did accomplish in his short time here. I think in honor of him, I'm going to try to catch up on Glee and at least watch his best scenes. I'm curious to see how the show will go on without him in season 5, but it's a little soon to be thinking about any of those details now as his cast and friends grieve their loss.
That's all for now,
Shelby
P.S. Do you have any memories of Cory or any great encounters of meeting him? Share them with me in the comments below or on Twitter (@ShelbyN92).
