One of my best friends died 17 days ago, on September 13th.
Yesterday, I attended a memorial service in his honor. I knew that he had been going through a hard time, and I was hoping that he was getting help for his alcoholism, but it sounds like it caught up to him.
He was lonely. Which is a terrible place to be. When you feel like you have no one to turn to, you have to rely on yourself. And my friend did not do well by himself. He would call just to have me reassure him that I love him and don't think that he's a total screw-up. He would apologize for things that I had long forgiven him for. He was the kind of person who felt good when he was moving forward, but couldn't stand being in one place. Constantly moving, constantly losing jobs and finding new ones, and constantly feeling like he was far behind his own standards.
I heard from his family that when they tried to tell him to get help, he would push them away. So whenever he was forced to move back in with his parents, which wasn't uncommon, he felt like an utter failure.
The pandemic shut him down. He had just heard from someone in California who wanted to work with him on developing a score for his musical, but everything had to stop. He kept working, kept trying to make it happen, but his demons were catching up with him now that he couldn't try and outrun them, and he was ill-equipped to fight them.
I was his friend for longer than I've been married. I spoke to him weekly. And now he's gone.
I am proud of how I acted with him. Whenever he was in town, I always made an effort to meet up with him and play board games, like we've done for over a decade. I kept in touch with him, gave him good actionable advice. I lent him money when he needed it. I told him that I loved him every time we talked.
And every time we said goodbye, we would hug until our hearts touched.
 |
| His dog. <3 A real sweet doggo right there. |
The most striking thing about the memorial was that, looking back on it, I was the only one who was his friend. Everyone else was either a relative or a friend of his parents. Meeting his brother and sister, it was clear that they weren't in contact, and they each said that they had heard a lot about me, while I had to be reminded of their names over the course of the day.
Out of at least fifty people at the memorial, I knew no one but his mother and his nephew, but I was the one who seemed to know the most about him.
I have vowed that my house would always be a safe, open, and welcoming place for my boys come hell or highwater, because I saw that when hell and highwater came for my friend, he felt oppressed living with his family.
Another thing is, and this is something that's happened before, is that it's so weird when I live up to the hype. I have personality in boldface font, and so people I've never met come to expect me to live up to a reputation that precedes me. But there I was, starting conversations with strangers, chatting amicably with nieces and nephews I'd never met, playing freeze-dance with a five year-old who would otherwise be throwing a tantrum, finding things to laugh about when talking about my late friend's oddities, and hugging his mother for a full minute while she cried into my vest. (Oh yes, and he loved to wear vests, so I wore one in his honor.)
Although the service was more of a drop-in-when-you-can arrangement, I arrived when it began, and left half an hour after it ended.
It's very surreal. I don't know if I've fully grasped that there won't ever be a next time with him.
I love him, and I will miss him very much. Probably for the rest of my life.
