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Ellen DeGeneres took to social media yesterday to share a teary-eyed video tribute to her friend Stephen “tWitch” Boss, days after his tragic suicide.

In the emotional clip, DeGeneres encourages everyone to “love each other and let people know we’re there for them.”

“I just wanted to say that the past 11 days have been really tough for everyone. Everyone is in pain and trying to make sense of it. We’ll never make sense of it,” said a choked up DeGeneres. “The holidays are hard, I think, anyway, but to honor Twitch, the best thing we can do is to laugh and hug each other, and play games, and dance and sing. That’s the way we honor him. We do the things that he loved to do…. And I know it seems hard. It seems impossible. But that’s how we honor him. We hug each other and tell each other we love each other, and let people know that we’re there for them. Check in on people.”

“I know it’s not a happy holiday, but he was pure light,” she adds. “If you knew him, you knew that. If you didn’t know him, you saw it. Let’s honor him and think about him and send love to one another.”

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner confirmed that Boss died by suicide December 13 from a gunshot wound to the head. He was 40.

Boss was a dancer, choreographer and DJ who joined The Ellen Show as a guest DJ in 2014 and stayed until DeGeneres ended the talk show in 2022. Boss became an executive producer on the show in 2020 and also had a longstanding association as a dancer-turned-judge on So You Think You Can Dance.

You can watch Ellen’s video message below.