Bastille Day: The Day That Changed My Life

Every year on July 14, people celebrate Bastille Day, the French national holiday commemorating the storming of the Bastille in 1789. For most people, it's simply another date on the calendar.

For me, it marks the day my life changed forever.

The story actually starts about a week before Bastille Day in 2005.

I was talking with my best friend, Nancy. We were doing what so many people do from time to time: reminiscing about high school, remembering the simpler days of the early 1990s, and wondering whatever happened to people we used to know.

Nancy asked, "Do you know whatever happened to Jay?"

Jay Seals had been a mutual friend from our days at Hillcrest High School in Dallas.

I told her, "No... but I bet I can find him."

This was 2005. Social media wasn't what it is today, and Facebook hadn't become the giant it would later become. Finding someone wasn't always easy.

Fortunately, I had a plan.

Jay's father was Dan Seals, better known to country music fans as "England Dan." My thinking was simple: if I couldn't find Jay, maybe I could find Dan. If I couldn't reach Dan, perhaps I could find his longtime manager, Tony. Surely one of those paths would eventually lead me to Jay.

I had a plan.

I even had a backup plan.

As it turned out, I didn't need either one.

On the second page of Google search results, I found an old computer bulletin board username I recognized: Nightshade.

There it was.

An email address.

I stared at it for a while before I started typing.

Writing that email turned out to be harder than finding him.

How do you write someone you haven't spoken to in years?

I started with something simple:

"I'm not even sure this is the right person, or if you remember me, but I'm looking for Jay Seals who went to Hillcrest High School in Dallas..."

I rewrote it several times over the next few days, trying to find the right words without sounding awkward or assuming too much.

Finally, on the evening of July 13, 2005, I hit Send.

The next morning, Bastille Day, there was a reply waiting for me.

Jay remembered me.

Not only that, he told me he had often wondered whatever had happened to me.

He explained that he was heading to a Bastille Day celebration at Café Coco in Nashville but promised he would try to call afterward.

That evening, my phone rang.

We talked late into the night.

It felt as though years had simply disappeared.

One phone call became another.

Then another.

Soon we were talking every single day.

In September, Jay drove his beat-up Teal Jeep to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to visit me.

By October, he had packed up his life in Tennessee and moved to Texas.

In November, we were engaged.

On May 7, 2006, we were married.

Looking back now, it's incredible to think that an ordinary conversation with a friend, a second page of Google results, an old bulletin board username, and one carefully written email completely changed the course of my life.

If I hadn't talked with Nancy that day...

If she hadn't asked about Jay...

If I had given up after the first page of search results...

If I had talked myself out of sending that email...

None of what followed would have happened.

We shared thirteen wonderful years together before cancer took Jay far too soon in 2018.

I would never wish for the pain of losing him.

But I would never trade those years we had together.

Not for anything.

Every Bastille Day, I think about that email and the phone call that followed.

It reminds me that sometimes the smallest decisions become the biggest turning points in our lives.

One conversation.

One Google search.

One email.

One phone call.

Sometimes that's all it takes to change your entire future.

Happy Bastille Day, Jay.

Thank you for answering that email.