An Open Letter to an Old Friend: Longer Than I Knew You

TW: suicide

Tomorrow marks the strange transition in a relationship that has been maintained in grief — I will have officially mourned you longer than I knew you. That’s an odd thing to acknowledge, and as of late, this has sent me into this strange arbitration process with my own memories and feelings; a negotiation of sorts.

I can feel my brain try and gaslight me at times - were we ever all that close? Did you really love me like I remember ? Did I love you like I remember? Did we spend any time together? Ever break bread? Ever hug? Did we even exist at the same time?

Could I have done more?

As time passes, I find myself with less and less tangible evidence of you, no matter how hard I dig for it.

I have the old rock you gave me, that I still keep in the pocket of my favorite coat, for protection. Ganesha in the kitchen to new beginnings. A flowery tie. The one photo I took of you. The one photo you took of me. I spent a couple of hours scouring Facebook looking through the handful of comments we’d left on each other’s posts — a socially media platform both of us hardly used. I lost our old texts when I upgraded my phone years ago, and Toyota Tacomas don’t really look like how they used to when you were alive and driving Cookie around. I met up with an old friend of yours for a walk through the mud and rain and we talked at length, and that went a long way towards healing some of the wounds I was letting bleed on other people.

I feel like the evidence of what was there has been falling through my hands, like sand, and each time I frantically scoop it back from off the ground to salvage in my hands, there is less of it. The wind sweeps some away each year. Sometimes I’m worried eventually all I’ll have left to hold is this feeling of melancholy or mourning, without any of the joy to show for it. Time is cruel in that way. It puts the onus of maintaining details and nuance back on us, and moves forward regardless of if we can keep up.

I miss you like crazy — that I know and believe no matter the evidence. I still want to tell you things, and ask you things. I’m still really sorry I didn’t call. I’m still not mad at you. I still love you. Recently, as this date has approached, I set about to ask myself what the nature of the void you left really is and I think I’ve begun to wrap my head around it. Aside from the obvious hole of that laugh of yours, and that hair, and the way your climbed mountains, and the images of you with Fanta and around Flagstaff, and besides the care and compassion you had for folks, the way you styled a vest, and all that warmth, there was something else.

The sense of safety.

I am an eldest sibling, and the older I get the more I come to realize the value in having people around that can be that mentor, and that check in on you, and ask how you’re doing, and hype you up, and give you advice, and tell you you’re doing a good job. When you’re that person for other people, because of your nature, it can be easy to find yourself in a position where maybe the folks around you don’t think you need that, or just operate on the assumption that you’ve got it. Admittedly, I am not inclined to let others play the role of caretaker for me so easily — I struggle with that. I think you did, too. And so you had this way about you, and this confidence, and you were older than me, and I looked up to you so much. I still use the things you said to try and inspire others to care, and to believe folks, and to make a difference. And I could ask you things, and you would talk to me honestly. You had experiences to share, and a world of wisdom from what you’d learned in your own life and travels, and you were giving with those things, and I never felt ashamed or embarrassed to lean on you. To vent to you or talk to you, or be vulnerable around you. You never made me feel lame for caring, or feeling, or wondering. And you had this way of letting me know you were thinking of me. What an honor, right? What a privilege to move through life with the knowledge in the back of your mind that there are others that are really invested in your well-being. We are lucky to have that, and to be alive.

Sometimes I wonder if the older we get, that harder it gets to replace those figures in our lives. Maybe we never really do. We get a finite amount of them, and as we lose them, we are left with the appreciation that they were here and we spend the rest of our days trying to remember them, and make them proud. Who knows. All I know is you’ve been gone longer than you were in my life and I thought it’d be easier by now. I miss you very much. A friend of mine once told me we die three deaths — when you die, when people stop speaking of you, and when people stop thinking of you. I plan to keep you from those other deaths as long as I am around.

Love,

Jermaine.