I know that my readership is pretty small, but if you know our favorite Swedish ex-pat Jay, his father passed away this weekend. His father was a really, really great guy who I was fortunate enough to have spent some time with at Jay’s wedding in Sweden a few years ago.

I’m really glad that I met him.

Ray’s obituary is available in the Savannah Morning News.

On Friday night, I spent the evening with Chris’s family, and found that my post on Chris’s death had made quite an impact on them. I guess it got forwarded around quite a bit, and people who I just met were thanking me for writing it. It was great to have people like something I wrote, but I couldn’t see a worse way to do it. The only way that I could think to respond to their thanks was to say that I wished that I never had to write it.

It was easily the most draining post and most draining week that I’ve had in a long time. I wish I was drained from being selfless and donating my support to his family, but I’m not. I’m self absorbed at the worst possible time. The more I found out about Chris that night, the more parallels I drew between our lives, which culminated in something his mother said in passing, but that stuck with me…

“You know, Chris used to think that no one liked him or that people were always angry at him all the time. But, they weren’t. They really liked him.”

It was the final plank to create some strange bridge that brought me face to face with my own choices, perceptions, and ultimately my own mortality.

And as I get older, my mortality and I get more and more estranged.

After spending a week of being dragged down by simple song lyrics like “How’d you like to be alone and drowning,” after Friday night, I shut down. I didn’t go to Chris’s wake. I didn’t go to his funeral at the National Cemetery in Bourne. I knew that I should have, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle talking about that post with strangers that might have read it. I knew that I couldn’t face his #1GF without being a more of a burden and less of a pillar. And that hasn’t happened to me before. It’s not very manly nor strong, but that’s the way it was.

And this morning as a I drove to work, I felt terrible about not going, because I don’t think that there is anything that important in my life that trumps losing a son or brother. But, I finally found that every tear is a tiny complaint for a world that does not hear human complaints. I can protest death as much as I can protest the wind. And its time to put my complaints aside and ask myself, “Where do I go from here?”

Related post: I’m Wiped Out

Chris and I were born a month apart. Our parents have been friends for years, and as toddlers we were in each other’s company all the time. Then, because life takes us all in our own directions, we just never saw each other again. Yet, even though I really didn’t see him much throughout our lives, I would always hear what Chris was up to, and I’m sure that he got the reports about me. That’s how we lived: A story here, a report there of kids we only recognized from Christmas cards.

When I was in my 20′s, I actually saw Chris for the first time that I can remember. He was getting married, and seemed as happy to see me as I was to see him. He was a pleasant guy, and I think I only saw him a few times after that, but every time was like having amnesia and being introduced to one of your close friends. It was comfortable, but you couldn’t place why. And then we’d go right back to trading stories through our parents again.

At some point in the last few years, something happened to Chris. I have no idea what it was, but his life went into a tailspin. The child that started off his life sitting in a playpen laughing at the giant patch on my fat baby head somehow ended up pretty heavily into drugs and homeless.

I can remember the day my mother called to tell me that Chris was living on the streets. I can remember her saying that she didn’t know what I could do, but because I had “been there”, I could somehow help. I don’t know shit about life, my friends, but I do know a lot about containing violence, addiction, and self-destruction. But, I had to admit that I had been sober so long that it was almost like I never had a problem. Or that maybe I had made a addictive mountain out of a molehill.

Your Mom will always do her best to paint you in a better light than what you really are, so when she says something like, “You know, this could easily have been you,” you can’t dismiss it. I was floored, and the point was taken. Contrary to what makes you feel superior, a lot of who and how you end up is dumb luck. So if you’re lucky, spread what little you might have to others who might not be so lucky, even if it seems minor.

I remember dialing Chris’s number as soon as I got into my work parking lot to see if there was anything that I could do, but all I could do was leave him a message asking about his life and telling a little about mine. I didn’t hear anything back, and figured that he must either be doing OK, or not interested in my patented brand of profound armchair psychology.

Surprisingly, a couple of months later, he left me a message to call him.

That was last year, and I never called him back.

In my stupid little life, I can’t really point to a single regret. I guess I think that the chips are going to fall where they may, making regret just another form of self-destruction. Maybe a phone call wouldn’t have meant shit, but I may have had some understanding that might’ve helped. And I will always know that I never made that call, and never can.

Today, they found Chris’s body on his girlfriend’s porch. From what I heard it was probably an overdose. He was a month older than me. We sat in the same playpen. We both had good parents, ended up addicts, and now he’s dead.

I generally don’t cry: Not at movies, not at weddings, not at death, but I feel weird. And shitty. And I don’t understand. And I feel so sad that he died alone on a fucking porch that I’ve just broken down unexpectedly several times and just wept into my hands.

So, here I am, mourning the loss of someone who I knew mostly through stories, trying to let go of the hope that he would eventually live happily ever after.

I’m wiped out.

Related post: Protesting the Wind

In my time of dying
Don’t want nobody to moan
All I want for you to do
Is take my body home

I was in the VA hospital for 18 hours ending around 6:30 AM this morning, keeping a dying friend company. I wrote this on my palm pilot sitting next to his bed at around 11 PM, while he lay unconscious…

I’ve been here for ten hours or so, watching my unconscious friend, so that he wouldn’t die alone. Even though he’s on 100% oxygen, every breath he takes lasts no more than a half second, and sounds like a straw sucking at the bottom of an empty milkshake. His breathing is short, and regular, but if he is a half second late, my head involuntarily swings around as fast as it can to make sure that he is ok. He wasn’t expected to live for more than a few hours, and the morphine and strain have kept him in a peaceful sleep for the last four or five. Before that, he was in and out of lucidity, his eyes following unseen phantoms, infrequently stopping to rest on the faces of those who love him. And there was a glimmer of recognition. Say it was wishful thinking, but it was there.

That’s Alzheimer’s. Little by little, it robs you of your mind. Some patients grow fearful. Some grow understandably angry and frustrated at the enveloping cloud of confusion that settles in. My friend here took a different path: He laughed.

And laughed.
And laughed.

When I helped him shave, and he rubbed the shaving cream all through his hair and all over his neck, rather than on his face, he looked at me, chuckled and asked, “What’d you make me do that for?” When the fashion police caught him wearing four shirts, two sweaters, three pairs of pants, and a winter hat at the same time, he laughed. When he jumped up for the second Patriots touchdown in two minutes, he laughed when reminded of instant replay.

He wasn’t always like this, though. He’s taken care of me since I was born. He babysat me every day while my parents worked. He let me chew whole packs of Hubba Bubba at once, and let me stay up through Disney, through Lawrence Welk, through Love Boat, and sometimes right through Fantasy Island, even though that little midget scared the crap out of me. My sister and I were given dinner, usually followed by our respective favorite ice creams, and some time around when the Love Boat was on, like clockwork, Richard Clark and I would eat a bowl of cereal together. This was my childhood.

As an even younger child, I did not comprehend that Richard would probably have liked to sleep rather than listen to me calling “Claaaaaarkie” over and over again down the back stairs to his apartment. But he would answer. And he would get me back with his little white lies.

In my young mind, Clarkie’s word was gospel. If Clarkie said that I was Jewish, then I must’ve been. Just because my parents were Catholics didn’t mean that I was. I went to a Jewish nursery school. Hell, it was enough proof for me…for years. Good one, Clarkie. He would also go on to convince me that I had single-handedly ended my Mom’s illustrious singing career as “Crystal, the lounge singer” simply for being born. Another good one, Clarkie. I eventually got over the guilt once I figured out that there is no way that my Mom was a lounge singer. I was also convinced that Clarkie attended every movie and/or circus that I went to because no matter where I told him that I had gone, he would always remark offhandedly that he had seen me there. I swore that the man was magic.

And he was. He always was.

The man took care of me when I needed it, and was overly generous to me, even when I didn’t. Hell, he used to slip me $50 for shoveling out his tiny little driveway, when there was no way that it was worth it, and no way I deserved it. He was a very generous man.

He has been there through my whole life, and being some of the closest family that he has, I’ll be damned if he’ll die alone…

Richard Clark, my friend of a scant 82 years, passed away this morning at 9:45 AM, just two hours after I left his side. It’s now 7 PM, and I’ve been up for well over a day. I’m exhausted, and my eyes are damp with tears for the loss of someone so great.

Dick requested no service, no newspapers, no wake, no funeral, and no exceptions. He will be buried in the military cemetery in Bourne.

I think I’m going to have a salutary bowl of cereal.