Cory

Cory was one of my closest friends. He passed away on 6 November 2024 (Wednesday). I learned what happened on Saturday. Another group of friends went to visit his house before we did. Our close friend and former roommate of many years, Trevor, came over to our house to deliver the news. But I already knew what it meant as soon as he said he needed to talk. I was living in denial because of Cory’s established pattern of cutting communication for days at a time without notice.

My partner, Ash, was best friends with Cory. They worked together shortly after we moved to Portland in 2012. They founded an LLC and released a video game together. Eventually they joined a health care startup as the first two non-founder employees. They worked together for over 7 years. Cory was an amazing influence on Ash and a great friend.

Wizards by Ralph Bakshi, one of Cory’s favorite movies.

We hung out many times, going over to each other’s houses, going to karaoke, going out for food, watching movies, etc. Our relationship really deepened during the darkness of November 2020, after many months of isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was in early November that year that Destiny 2: Beyond Light was released. I should write more about Destiny some time and what it has meant to me over the years, but the short version is that I spent a few hundred hours playing the game and really enjoying it, before our previous group disbanded.

Destiny is at its core a 3 player game… and Ash and I still liked it! We just didn’t have a 3rd player, so it was dormant in our lives for years. After completing our previous 3 player co-op game (the first Remnant game, as I recall), I think I was the one who proposed, half-jokingly, what if we got Cory into Destiny?

Well, Cory loved it. He had never played before, but he took to it quicker than I expected, for such an obtuse and divisive game. Hell, he was playing more than me and Ash combined for a while. We did the whole new campaign together, but that was only the beginning. I’ve now accumulated over 3,000 hours in the game. Actually, I just checked, and Cory’s account still has 100 more hours than me at time of writing. This was the core place I bonded with Cory over multiple years. We played campaign missions (including the legendary difficulty), Nightfalls, Crucible, Gambit, a few Raids, and a lot of Dungeons. Looking at Cory’s account, he finished all 9 unique Dungeons in the game, for a total of 96 clears and 158 hours of playtime.

We spent countless hours playing together to become “Transcendent”.

We conquered many of these Dungeons with little or no outside assistance, using our wits and observational skills to learn boss mechanics and optimize our DPS. As triumphant as these dungeon runs were, the best moments were simply grinding and talking. We would chat about anything and everything for hours while doing Destiny’s silly menial tasks in hopes of reward. Or we wouldn’t! One of the remarkable things about friendship is just… existing besides someone else. Watching TV together, reading in the same room, or in this case, just brain off gaming together.

To some it may sound cheesy, but this time was really important to me. I loved spending time together as our fireteam trio just as much as I loved playing the game. It was truly my second place, and I was happy to be adventuring with Cory and shooting the breeze (and the aliens) often multiple times per week together.

WEBFISHING was a nice relaxing break from Destiny.

Being “just” friends with Cory, not family, we were worried that we might not get much closure from this. Fortunately, Cory’s father and aunt arrived to help take care of things. We met them for the first time at Cory’s house. I wish we had met under better circumstances, but we all appreciated each other’s presences. We cried a lot. We hugged. We talked. We helped his father learn how to use 1Password. We still need to go through one of his old computers and save files we want to keep.

I took the job of calling many of his friends to deliver the news. Each time felt like tearing my heart open. I’m crying again right now writing this. The compartmentalization of grief is truly incredible. I’ve been so busy with other things I’ve barely thought about this for days, but I’m a complete mess all over again writing this.

Cory was one of my closest friends. It’s been a month and thinking about this is once again making my head throb, my nose ache from swelling, and my eyes sting from all the tears.

Over the past few months our gaming trio had really fallen out of love with Destiny 2 (and that’s mostly Destiny’s fault, to be honest). With the scaling back of that, we’d been on the lookout for the next good co-op game to play together. We were waiting for the early access release of Path of Exile 2. Unfortunately, it was delayed several months, and it only just came out. We… didn’t get to play it with him. And we never will. I’ve only logged a few hours and I’m having a lot of fun, but I really wish Cory could try it.

Cory’s dog, Big Time

I’m going to miss going over to Cory’s house. I’m going to miss playing with Cory’s dog. I’m going to miss playing games with him. I’m going to miss making silly jokes with him. I’m going to miss streaming on Twitch with him. I’m going to miss cooking with him. I’m going to miss going places with him. I’m going to miss him.