In memoriam

I’ve been wanting to write to you for ages now, but nothing comes. I’ve tried, I’ve thought about what I want to say, I’ve even taken the time. But ten weeks have passed, and I’m none the nearer to any declaration of anything at all, or even a poetic rant. Other people have written things, and I’ve wanted to say or write at least something, but pain and grief has had me quite incapacitated. But if I don’t get some words down soon I might explode, so here goes. I guess I’m supposed to be respectful and things like that but it doesn’t seem feasible, all things considered. I’m left here while you passed on to an unknown place, with words unsaid and a future unshared. There’s nothing respectful about that, no matter whose fault it was.

I’m angry, at times. Sometimes at you. Sometimes at myself. Mostly, though, at the world in general, that treated you so cruelly. It’s not fair. Neither the way in which you departed or the combination of circumstances that eventually drove you to take your leave. I think about you and choke upon the fact that you’re no longer breathing. The fact that I have to go on while you opted out is so heavy to bear that I don’t think I’d be able to do it without friends helping me through every single day.

I went to your funeral. It was a bright, sunny day, with a playful spring wind blowing that reminded me of you. I brought you tiny yellow flowers, one for each year you stayed in this world, and a cold lump of darkness inside me for all the uncounted years without you yet to come. A you-shaped hole in the world that is apparent in everything I see and feel. I listened to the priest as he talked about God and heaven and someone I didn’t really know. I guess it was you, even though he got your name wrong. I stared at the stained-glass windows and cried and kept thinking that I’d rather have gone to your wedding than to your funeral. I’d rather have married you, if that would have kept you alive. I sang you a song. I guess it sounded okay because some people told me it was beautiful, but of course it was nothing compared to what it would have been like with your voice that always made the hairs on my skin stand up in reverent delight. Anyway, you were otherwise occupied, so I did my best. Felt like someone had to do it. You got a speech too, it was beautiful and true. I hope that if you heard us it was through the wind and the trees or something beautiful like that, because I can’t stand the thought of you being trapped forever in a coffin beneath two metres of dirt.

But if you’re anywhere at all I don’t think that is the place. I saw your body, and it was pretty evident that you didn’t have any further use for it. If you have a physical form now I believe it is made out of dreams. There are nights when you’re in my arms again, with warm lips and soft fingers and an all-knowing and forgiving smile on your face. I cry while you embrace me, like so many times before. But there’ll be no more of that in the real world. No more consoling one another’s panic attacks, no more messages with little hearts in them, no more finishing each other’s sentences. No more plans and dreams of moving in together, of travelling the world together, of being creative together. I’m left alone to wonder at the million futures now rendered impossible, and to regret everything I didn’t do that in hindsight might have prevented this. So what if it’s futile? They keep telling me that any amount of wishful thinking won’t ever bring you back, but that doesn’t keep the thought-feeling-conglomerations of imagined alternate realities from forcing their ways into my mind.

I miss you. A world without you is wrong. I feel alone and scared and I miss the talks we had. I miss the staying up way too late and the midnight baking, the times you would dry your tears to take up a guitar and then transfix me with your words and your voice and your melodies. You would make me feel so seen. We were so different on the surface, but deeper down I wonder if there ever was anyone I could relate to as fundamentally as I could to you. We had been through much the same things, we had felt the same feelings, and even if everything about you was always to the power of ten I saw in you what I could have been. We came close, sometimes so close it freaked us both out, but not close enough. I would’ve wanted to be there for you, to never let you out of my sight. It would have been worth it, it would have been worth anything, if I could somehow have saved you. Now I won’t have to worry about you anymore, because the worst has already happened. It’s fucking unreal. Maybe I should have somehow been prepared for it, but it’s too absurd. I always had hope for you. Even when you were caught in ever down-winding dark spirals I never doubted that your future would be brighter. That everything would eventually be all right, or at least less overwhelmingly chaotic and miserable.

If you’re somehow still aware somewhere, I hope there is peace, at least. Me I’ll keep seeing you in every aspect of the world that you ever touched. That is to say, a great deal of my existence. The music we listened to. The Amanda Palmer concert that we both bought tickets to as a surprise to one another. The first time you kissed me, in that Sigur Rós concert in a state of surreal euphoria after 40 hours awake. The parties of mine which you turned from okay to awesome by means of your radiant charm and inclination for crazy post-midnight antics. The food we found in containers, the ice-cream we made from everything we could find in my cupboard, the snails you would go out of your way to save from being trodden to death on the pavement. The times you saw me and backed me up when nobody else did, and when you time and again pointed out the obvious solutions to problems I’d fretted about for years. When you rendered me speechless by telling me I was beautiful while I was busy thinking about you as a social-genius goddess of prettiness. And still it was your mind that was the most beautiful thing about you. How you would spontaneously wax poetical about some douchebag on the subway or your stomach-cramps. How you always insisted on helping people, no matter how little energy you had for yourself. How you would do things just because otherwise nobody would.

And all the things you’ll never do now. We won’t create the most awesome collective ever of friends living together. I won’t come with you as you drive around the world in your flower-painted hippie-bus. I won’t know if you’d have laughed at my tasteless jokes about you now being permanently late. We won’t meet in New Zealand a second time, and have another round of crazy-awesome adventures. I won’t know how you’d react if I’d eventually told you that I love you. But I will (or so I hope) stay in touch with all the amazing people you tied me together with. Even though you’ve given up your ability to interact with us there is still so much that revolves around you.

I guess you would’ve wanted me to move on. Some days I feel like I want nothing more than to follow you, but I know that’s not a valid option. In a way what you did was cheating, but I intend to play by the rules on this point. Reality will continue to be heavy for a while, but with time I might return to being functional, possibly even creative. I’ll never forget you. Hell, I wouldn’t be able to even if I wanted to. But I don’t. I want to remember everything that is and was you; the hope and despair, the beauty and rage, the chaos and solace. The way you inspired so many of us to be better people.

I love you. I miss you. You’ll always continue to be a part of me.

Winterdragon