Bits and pieces in my head
It kills me that I’m seven years older than he ever will be. He was 20 when he died, a year and a half older than me. Now I’m 27, but he is still frozen in time at 20.
I don’t have a photograph of him, which has always made me sad. Not that I need it; I can still see his face so clearly. Still, it would be wonderful to have. I’m terrified of losing the details over time.
I often think about writing a letter to his parents. I want to tell them how much their son meant to me and what a wonderful person he truly was. I’ve been wanting to write this letter for 8 years, but I’ve always been afraid of making them cry.
When I googled his name, I was saddened to discover that it pulls up no hits. Not one. I almost want to write a page in his memory, with his full name, but I’m afraid to, because I’m not ready to come out with my real identity. I’m not ready for people to see that and wonder who I am, slowly ticking through his friends until it all fits into place.
He used to come to the restaurant where I worked, which he worked at before I started, and have dinner with me. I don’t remember if it was every night, but it was quite often. I would wait to take my break until he came, and then we would go downstairs to the empty section and eat together. I had such a crush on him, but we were friends, and I didn’t know if he wanted anything more than that. I’ve never been one to make the first move, and while I realize that he went out of his way to be nice to me, he was the type of guy who went out of his way to be nice to everyone, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything. It’s one of those mysteries that I’ll never have an answer to, and I kick myself for never trying to get the answer while he was still around.
He was the one that I wanted to take to prom. God, I wanted to ask him to prom. I tried, sort of, but I never could get the words out. In the end, I asked a guy that I didn’t even like all that much, and it never felt right. I always wished I had asked Trey instead. After he died, I most definitely regretted not getting up the courage to ask. Prom night, to put it nicely, sucked balls. With Trey, I have a feeling that it would not have done so.
My friend had her laptop at work one night. She let Trey mess around on it while she was working, and afterwards, we discovered that he had changed the main loading screen on Windows 98 to read Winblows 98. He did something to the My Computer icon too, but I just realized that I can’t remember what he made it say…something with his name in it. My, that loss of a memory is upsetting.
When K called to tell me that he had died, I told her to come to my house. Then I hung up and called a couple more friends, told them the terrible news, and told them to come over. We all sat in the massage room at my mom’s house and cried and cried and cried. It was unreal. We were still reeling over the loss of B, and I didn’t even know that I had any more tears left in my body. It turns out, I did. I still do.
I wonder if I’ll ever get over the loss of this friend. I wonder if a Christmas season will ever go by without tears. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to remember him dearly without wanting to burst into tears at his all-too-early departure from this world. I try to make myself smile, because I know that’s what he would have wanted. That’s what he would be doing, if our roles were reversed. So I smile, even if just for a moment, before the sadness washes over me once more.
Maybe nine years will be the turning point. Maybe next year will be the year I finally don’t cry. Eight years, long as it may sound, is just not long enough.
This day in my history
Eight years and a few days ago, I received some terrible and shocking news. A high school friend, a crazy and happy guy, had killed himself. Here’s an excerpt from my old journal, written on the day of his funeral.
B had just gotten fired from his job because he had been skipping work so much to study for finals and that day he got his grades and he failed two finals, meaning he failed two classes, meaning that he was going to get kicked out of school for a semester and kicked out of his fraternity and him and his girlfriend had just broken up and all the grades and stuff were in his car and he was driving home from school to here for vacation and he went dove hunting last week so his gun was in the car and he pulled over, put it in park and shot himself and when he shot himself his leg spasmed, hitting the gas pedal and making the engine do something bad so his car was smoking so a lady pulled over to see if he needed help and she found him.
Shit, 19-year-old me could write some run-on sentences, huh? In my defense, I could hardly see the screen through my tears. Because that’s not where the pain stops.
Eight years ago today, my friend B was buried.
Eight years ago today, right after B’s funeral, I got some more terrible and shocking news.
Eight years ago today, my very dear friend died. Again, here are my words from that awful day:
i just turned nineteen. i’m supposed to be collecting love letters, not obituaries. especially not two in one week. trey was honestly the nicest guy i’ve ever met in my entire life. but this morning he was driving in parker county behind an 18-wheeler. the truck stopped really fast to avoid hitting a dog and trey couldn’t stop in time. he slammed right into it. trey died because of a fucking dog. i feel so empty. life got brighter every time he came around. i could be having the worst day ever, then trey just magically shows up and everything’s so much better. he always wore rollerblades. i went to my first concert with him. it was very last minute, because the guy i was going to go with decided not to go. i was complaining about and trey offered to take me instead. then after the first band he left to go find an atm and witnessed a car wreck and gave the people a ride and helped them out and everything. that’s just the kind of guy he was. he can’t be gone. it’s not fair. he’s trey. he’s not allowed to die. he’s invincible. he got in a wreck with a semi a few months ago and he only got a scratch. the car was totalled. he can’t be dead. why? i don’t understand. i had doubts before, but now i know there can’t be a god. he would never be so cruel. and all this happened just a few days after a guy i used to go to school with shot himself. [story cut, see above] i thought i was torn up when i found out about b…but when k called about trey…fuck. i can’t deal with this. it’s not fair. it’s not fair. i’ve cried so much and when i finally stop, i picture trey with his goofy little smile and it all comes rushing out again. why trey? there has never been a kinder person on this earth. he was only twenty. he can’t be gone. fuck. i hate life.
As you can see, I was a mess. December 20, 2000, was probably the most devastating day in my life. I mean, I cried and cried and cried about one friend, until I thought I had nothing left. Then right after his funeral, I got a call telling me about my other, much closer friend. Words cannot describe the pain.
Eight years later, and I still tear up. If I get stuck driving behind a semi-truck on the highway, I suddenly feel like I can’t breathe. Eight years is a long time to mourn. Maybe it’s made worse by the holiday timing. I know that I’ve never had a truly merry Christmas ever since. I try, but I get so sad. This morning, I realized I had to write about it. Since then, I’ve tried, and it still feels clunky.
Every time I start to tell my story, I get interrupted. I feel like I’ve been holding back a giant cry since yesterday morning, when I found myself stuck behind a semi on my way to work. I couldn’t cry then, because I was driving to work. I started telling J the story today, but I was interrupted by my mother’s call. When I finally got back to telling the story again, she called back. My tears have been interrupted so many times that I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get them all out.
Writing was supposed to help me deal with this. Instead, I feel like throwing the whole thing out. I can’t stand to go back and edit, or else I will end up deleting. One hell of a way to come back from a six-week hiatus, for sure.
