I Miss You Mr. Puhutski.
It's one of the strangest feelings to find out that one of your best friends is dead. I'm not even exactly sure how to describe it. Surreal at first. Thoughts that it's all just some kind of sick joke that my friends decided to pull on me. But then I started shaking. And the tears started rolling from my eyes, unnoticed by myself until one dripped off my face and onto my trembling arm.
His sister had called my parents' house at 7 that morning. Trying to find me. Trying to find out if I knew where he was, what happened to him. I wasn't at my parents' so my mother gave her my cell phone number. I never got the call. My mom called me later to ask me about it. Told me how desperate and hopeless his sister had sounded over the phone. It wasn't until hours later that the story came out. That everyone realized what happened. After my mom called, I called Jeff to try to figure out for myself where he was. I got the familiar answering machine message of his cellphone. The Wiggles "Wake Up Jeff!" theme song from the Wiggles guitar that I had given him. I left a message asking him where he was and what was going on. Telling him I hoped he was ok and to please, please call me back so I wouldn't worry. I hate knowing that he'll never get that message. That it's still sitting in the voicemail of his cellphone at the bottom of some lake. Or maybe in a bag of personal items at the morgue.
After I called Jeff I tried to distract myself from thinking about the situation by getting back to editing the video that he and I had been working on for the past few days. That I had nearly brought to completion. I told myself that Jeff had probably gotten drunk and wondered off somewhere and his sister couldn't find him. Or he'd decided to spend the night at someone's house and hadn't been found as of yet. That the worse thing that could have happened was that he tried to drive drunk and got in a minor fender-bender. I tried not to worry. I tried to stay focused on the task at hand. But just to be sure, Dan and I checked the Sunday paper. Where we found no story of our friend.
It wasn't until later that afternoon when the police had finally located his body and pulled it from the lake that I was let on to the tale that had begun at two o'clock that morning. The twenty-some-odd people that took to the lake for a lakeside party and campout. The drinking that had occurred. The drunken swimming. And finally Jeff, spotting a canoe, and acting as the Jeff that we all know and love, climbed inside and decided to take it out, using his hands as oars. I can only imagine that Jeff did what Jeff always did when he was drunk. He'd get tons of energy and get sort of crazy and then just passed out. Everyone on shore heard a splash and started calling his name. I'm sure by this time he'd passed out in the bottom of the canoe and, moving to readjust against an uncomfortable position, had flipped the canoe. People swam out to try to find him after he didn't respond to their calling of his name.
In my head I can't decide if he was completely passed out and never even responded to the water filling his lungs, or if he tried to fight against the water and couldn't manage in his drunken state. I wonder what, if anything, crossed through his mind.
After I was told about the accident I didn't believe it until Dan pulled up the report on the King 5 news site. There I read how his body hadn't been found until nearly 10 hours after he'd gone in the water. About how an autopsy was still to be performed to figure out the exact cause of death. And it was then that I finally believed what had happened. And cried harder not wanting them to cut open my friend. To break those ribs that Conner had fractured that one night we were all wrestling in my living room. To search for water in those lungs that I'd felt expand into my own chest on so many of our hugs.
That night everyone went to Tracey's. We sat in her front yard, faces swollen, eyes brimming with tears, and remembered everything that was Jeff Puhutski.
It all hurts so badly. I hate knowing that he'll never see our video that I finally finished editing. That we'll never take my birthday trip to the Seattle Arts Museum. Or eat baby-sized burritos at Bimbos. That we'll never snap pictures together at shows or go back to his house to develop them in his darkroom. That he won't be moving to Seattle with us. That we'll never make another video together. That we'll never learn French together or watch new Family Guy episodes or eat at the Voyeur or go on walks where we find crazy men's underwear scattered in the trees. That no one will ever call me a pestokalifragerrestrial again. And I don't know how I'll ever watch another episode of Trailer Park Boys without him. We had a pact! We can't watch the show unless both of us are there!
I miss him so much. I want him back. I just want my friend Jeff back.
His sister had called my parents' house at 7 that morning. Trying to find me. Trying to find out if I knew where he was, what happened to him. I wasn't at my parents' so my mother gave her my cell phone number. I never got the call. My mom called me later to ask me about it. Told me how desperate and hopeless his sister had sounded over the phone. It wasn't until hours later that the story came out. That everyone realized what happened. After my mom called, I called Jeff to try to figure out for myself where he was. I got the familiar answering machine message of his cellphone. The Wiggles "Wake Up Jeff!" theme song from the Wiggles guitar that I had given him. I left a message asking him where he was and what was going on. Telling him I hoped he was ok and to please, please call me back so I wouldn't worry. I hate knowing that he'll never get that message. That it's still sitting in the voicemail of his cellphone at the bottom of some lake. Or maybe in a bag of personal items at the morgue.
After I called Jeff I tried to distract myself from thinking about the situation by getting back to editing the video that he and I had been working on for the past few days. That I had nearly brought to completion. I told myself that Jeff had probably gotten drunk and wondered off somewhere and his sister couldn't find him. Or he'd decided to spend the night at someone's house and hadn't been found as of yet. That the worse thing that could have happened was that he tried to drive drunk and got in a minor fender-bender. I tried not to worry. I tried to stay focused on the task at hand. But just to be sure, Dan and I checked the Sunday paper. Where we found no story of our friend.
It wasn't until later that afternoon when the police had finally located his body and pulled it from the lake that I was let on to the tale that had begun at two o'clock that morning. The twenty-some-odd people that took to the lake for a lakeside party and campout. The drinking that had occurred. The drunken swimming. And finally Jeff, spotting a canoe, and acting as the Jeff that we all know and love, climbed inside and decided to take it out, using his hands as oars. I can only imagine that Jeff did what Jeff always did when he was drunk. He'd get tons of energy and get sort of crazy and then just passed out. Everyone on shore heard a splash and started calling his name. I'm sure by this time he'd passed out in the bottom of the canoe and, moving to readjust against an uncomfortable position, had flipped the canoe. People swam out to try to find him after he didn't respond to their calling of his name.
In my head I can't decide if he was completely passed out and never even responded to the water filling his lungs, or if he tried to fight against the water and couldn't manage in his drunken state. I wonder what, if anything, crossed through his mind.
After I was told about the accident I didn't believe it until Dan pulled up the report on the King 5 news site. There I read how his body hadn't been found until nearly 10 hours after he'd gone in the water. About how an autopsy was still to be performed to figure out the exact cause of death. And it was then that I finally believed what had happened. And cried harder not wanting them to cut open my friend. To break those ribs that Conner had fractured that one night we were all wrestling in my living room. To search for water in those lungs that I'd felt expand into my own chest on so many of our hugs.
That night everyone went to Tracey's. We sat in her front yard, faces swollen, eyes brimming with tears, and remembered everything that was Jeff Puhutski.
It all hurts so badly. I hate knowing that he'll never see our video that I finally finished editing. That we'll never take my birthday trip to the Seattle Arts Museum. Or eat baby-sized burritos at Bimbos. That we'll never snap pictures together at shows or go back to his house to develop them in his darkroom. That he won't be moving to Seattle with us. That we'll never make another video together. That we'll never learn French together or watch new Family Guy episodes or eat at the Voyeur or go on walks where we find crazy men's underwear scattered in the trees. That no one will ever call me a pestokalifragerrestrial again. And I don't know how I'll ever watch another episode of Trailer Park Boys without him. We had a pact! We can't watch the show unless both of us are there!
I miss him so much. I want him back. I just want my friend Jeff back.