When Matthew Perry died in October 2023 at 54, the public grieved the loss of Chandler Bing, the quick, anxious, endlessly quotable heart of “Friends.” His sister Caitlin Morrison was grieving something more private. And in the weeks after his death, her phone kept ringing with stories about her brother she had never heard. In an interview with CTV’s “The Social” (@thesocialctv), Morrison described what those calls were like. One after another, people reached out not just to offer condolences but to tell her how Perry had quietly helped them through the worst stretches of their lives. One caller recounted how he had stepped in to help their wife through a crisis. Others were people who had gotten through their own struggles because of something he did or said. None of it had been public. Most of it, she was hearing for the first time. View this post on Instagram “This was a guy I could lean on every time things were hard, and there were so many stories like that,” Morrison said. “He went around even when he was struggling and did everything he could to help anyone else who was struggling.” Perry was open for years about his severe addiction to drugs and alcohol, a fight he documented unsparingly in his 2022 memoir and in interviews. He was not a man who had beaten his demons and then turned around to help others from a place of safety. He was helping people while still in the thick of his own struggle, which is a harder and more generous thing. He was also clear about how he wanted to be remembered, and it had nothing to do with the sitcom that made him famous. “When I die, I want helping others to be the first thing that’s mentioned,” he said in an interview with Tom Power. “Addiction is far too powerful for anyone to defeat alone, but together, one day at a time, we can beat it down.” His family has worked to make that wish the headline. Morrison now serves as executive director of the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada, which supports people in their first year of recovery, the period Perry himself described as the hardest. As she told CNN, the work doubles as her own way through grief. “If the work that I’m doing right now saves a family from feeling that way, that’s a relief to my own grief,” she said. The calls, in the end, gave her something the public tributes couldn’t. Not the famous version of her brother, but the private one, the friend strangers trusted in their lowest moments, doing the quiet work nobody filmed. “It makes me feel amazing,” she said of hearing the stories. For a sister missing her brother, each call was both a fresh grief and a reminder of exactly who he was. If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use, the SAMHSA National Helpline is free, confidential, and available 24/7 at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). The post After Matthew Perry died, the condolence calls revealed a side of him even his sister didn’t fully know appeared first on Upworthy.