Tag: memory

Remembering Chris

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In April of 2007, I had an email exchange with my friend Chris.  We talked about silly stuff, like an online article about the rebirth of the boy band Menudo, and important stuff, like how he was looking for a law school.  He’d visited Tulane and loved it, and he had snail mailed me some cool goodies from New Orleans.  He was gearing up to visit another law school, this time in Hawaii.  Selfishly, I didn’t want him to go to school in Hawaii; we seldom saw each other in person with our work lives in different parts of NC, but gosh, if he moved to Hawaii, that would be way too far apart.  I was hoping he’d pick Tulane, and I’d get a great excuse to see New Orleans to visit him there.

In 2007, we were in our early thirties and we’d been friends since 8th grade.  We’d made a pact that if we were both single at age 40 that we’d just go ahead and marry each other because a few decades of friendship sounded like as good a foundation for a marriage as anything else we’d heard.  It’s worth noting when I mention the marriage idea that we didn’t have some big romance going on or anything like that; we’d just been friends seemingly forever and had the best time when we hung out together, so it was just one idea amongst thousands of other goofy things we’d talked about over the years in the way old friends talk about anything and everything.  Chris was a good friend to me, just an energetic beacon of goodness, light and laughter.

On that trip to Hawaii with plans to visit a law school, snapping photos along the way as Chris did all the time as a photographer and environmental journalist, a local man on drugs took objection to the photography and landed a blow to Chris’ head that resulted in a fatal brain hemorrhage.  Just like that, poof, all the promise, all the light…extinguished by one man’s anger under the influence.

I still dream that I am talking to Chris sometimes, always so vivid, that he’s called to say he’s coming back from some conference or another, that he’s grabbed boiled peanuts for me at the South Carolina state line and that he’ll stop by to visit before heading home.  I dream that we laugh and listen to music.  Last night, though, I had a dream that was just a repeat of the day I learned he’d passed away and the surreal drive to Apex for his service the next day…in the dream, I stood up and spoke briefly at his service just as I did in 2007 and in the dream, I drove home crying, 2007 all over again.  I woke up crying.  I miss my friend.

In 2007, I thought all the light went out when that stranger took his life, but all these years later I realize it didn’t, not really.  Five lives were saved when Chris passed away by his decision to be an organ donor, so there is light and life still carrying on because of him.  I smile when I think of the goofy conversations we had.  I remember how much he loved his big sister, how he loved his mom, how he loved his dog and when we were older, how much he loved being an uncle.  I still have the little voodoo protection doll he sent me from New Orleans, and I have the copies of CDs he made me to support his side of any argument over what band was better in any given discussion…those things make me smile.  As long as Chris is not forgotten, the light has not gone out.  I do feel sad, like today when I woke from the dream, but mostly I try to remember the good stuff, like eating pizza and drinking beer at Mellow Mushroom or even sitting together at the library desk in middle school where we were “working” (eating peppermints and being silly in hushed voices mostly).  Chris changed my life for the better; he was sunshine, light, moonbeams, rainbows, ocean waves…all the good stuff a person could hope to be.  Sure, he could be an absolute smartass, but mostly he was a loyal, good-hearted friend.  Miss you much today, Chris, wherever you are, wherever we go when we leave these bodies behind.

 

LYLAS

Do you remember “LYLAS” or “LYLAB?”  We used to write that in yearbooks back in the day.  Love you like a sister.  Love you like a brother.  For whatever reason, we couldn’t write “love you” or “love” outright–we had to qualify it, disclaim it, with “hey, I’m fond of you, but only like I’d be fond of a sibling” as though claiming someone as family was less provocative or edgy than just saying “I love you.”

LYLAS came to mind at our gathering Saturday night when we were talking about yearbooks and the “profound” messages we’d written to each other way back then.  This was a gathering of our old tribe, a tribe that came together in the late 1980’s. This is part of my chosen “family,” the LYLAS and LYLAB folks that will always be dear to my heart. Some of that tribe I still see often, and some of that tribe I only stay connected to via Facebook or text messages, but they are still “my people:” people who I can settle into a comfortable conversation and rapport with whether it’s been 10 days or 10 years since I’ve last seen them, and when and if they need me, I will rush to them no matter how long it’s been.  Some of that tribe I’ve known since I was 5 years old, and I didn’t even realize how much I’d missed everyone until we gathered all together, Jello shots in hand, trading stories and laughter.  There’s a good energy when you gather “your people” together, a collective happiness and comfort that can’t be faked.

We gathered this time in memory of our friend Jason.  Jason was a smiling, positive person who passed away this month, a shock to us all given how much effort he’d given this last year to improving his health.  We are in our early 40’s now, this tribe, and while I guess we are middle aged, it doesn’t seem right than any of us could die so soon.  We still have so many dreams, so much more to do, and it is a terrible loss that our people, our connections, could be gone in an instant.  Jason, I will miss you; we will miss you.  I “liked” things he posted on Facebook just hours before his death, but I hadn’t told him anything important or personal in ages, because, well, I guess I still thought we all had plenty of time.  I was wrong.

So, to my people, my tribe, wherever you are, whether you were able to raise a Jello shot on Saturday night or we raised it without you, please know that I LYLAS, LYLAB, just plain love you.  You are my people, the Deadbeat Club. “We would talk every day for hours; we belong to the deadbeat club.” Or if you prefer, we are the Breakfast Club, “demented and sad, but social.” No matter the name, you will always be my people.

I still miss them

When Chris was murdered, it took me weeks to stop crying.  Every song we’d ever talked about since middle school made me choke up, and there were so many songs because music was one of our biggest common bonds that I would find myself crying in the grocery store to the songs playing through the aisles.  With time, it got easier.  Time didn’t make me understand the “why” of it, his sudden death, but it hurt less often.  I could think of happy memories and not fall apart, but I still miss him.  This morning on the way to work, I heard one of the last songs we talked about before he was killed, a cover song done by Agent Orange, and I had to stop the car.  I was just seized with this huge sudden wave of grief out of nowhere.  I miss Chris.  I miss my friend and his humor and his photography and his brilliance, one of the smartest people I’ve ever known.

When Kevin died in his 30s from colon cancer, I was furious with the universe.  Cancer is for old people and we weren’t old.  He was just a year older than me.  By the time I got my motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license, he was too sick to ride with me, so we never got to do that.  I remember when we were dating, just kids, and he couldn’t afford to send me flowers for Valentine’s Day because the florists jacked the price way up for delivery…but cash and carry flowers were affordable, so he had one of his friends bring the flowers to me like a delivery.  That level of kindness and effort set a bar that I don’t think anyone else has ever matched.  Kevin told me I was important, unique, special and worthwhile at a time in my life when I didn’t believe I was any of those things…and many years later, before he passed away, we got to talk and he told me that sparkle in my eye, my energy, was one of a kind and that he was so blessed to know me, and I wept and wept and wept on the spot.  Sincerity and honesty, saying things from the heart uncensored, so rare, but that was his gift; there was no BS, just a purity in the things he would say.  Any song from Cinderella’s “Night Songs” album reminds me of him, makes me smile.  I saw someone on a black Hayabusa the other day, and there was that grief, popping up like a damn jack in the box out of nowhere, and filling my eyes with tears.  I am a better person for the time I knew him.

I still talk to them sometimes.  Call me crazy; I don’t give a damn.   In the car, alone, sometimes I’ll tell Chris and Kevin I miss them, I love them and that I think of them often, because I do, it’s all true.

I miss Clay, too, and wonder if there was anything I could have said or done…I saw him the night before he took his life and I never had a single worry that he’d do such a thing.  Was I blind or did he just hide it well?  And Gracie and the drugs…damn it, life doesn’t have to be a drugged up haze and chasing that escape took you from us too soon.

Gone too quickly, all of you.  You are missed.  You are not forgotten.  You are alive every time I remember you, every moment recalled.  Thank you for every laugh, every song, every story.