Worst day so far
Was yesterday. Yesterday was the day I and about 100 other people put my best friend's body in the ground. I played and sang a song by the Screaming Trees for him at the funeral that the two of us used to play in my bedroom a lot when we were 14 or so.
Karen and I were with my parents, coming back from the airport late Sunday night when I got a phone call that Mike had been in a car accident. Five days later, it is still impossible that he's actually gone. We had big plans.
We shared: high school Japanese class for 4 years, the release of Final Fantasy III, discovering pot, the tennis team in high school, subverting the agenda of our senior yearbook from the inside, so much guitar playing and howling at my house (mudhoney to nirvana to built to spill to our own shit), the first day of college, secret conversations about our first serious girl friends, rock climbing (I remember one late night, crossing the UW campus after a party, me stupidly climbing 30 feet up a column outside of the Physics building, not being able to get down, and looking down at Mike, asking him to catch me right before I fell. I would've squashed him if he'd tried), being dorm mates for 2 quarters, living together again after my year away in Japan, driving up to Vancouver at 10 o clock on a September morning heading North over the curve of the Lions Gate bridge toward wilderness adventure...
What with 3 years of the JET program, and 2 years at grad school in Santa Barbara, Mike and I hadn't seen much of each other over the past 5 years. Pretty much what we could sneak in during my visits home for the holidays and such. He was waiting for me though. Waiting for me to move back here so we could pick up being brothers where we'd last had to put it down. It was 4 months ago when Mike started calling me in Santa Barbara, starting the work of convincing me that flying to Seattle for our 10 year high school reunion was somehow a good idea. I resisted at first, but thank god he broke me down. We were both so stoked when he pulled up in his honda sportscar at baggage claim to get me, and the reunion was actually a good, sloppy time.
We've been back up in Seattle now since Oct. 10th or so, and we got to see Mike a good number of times in the last two months. There was talk of house buying, of futures. And that's what I'll be trying to get my head around for the rest of my life, I think. How we could be having a cigarette, joking with my mom on the deck, finally reunited just last week, just like the old days, and now he's in the ground, and I will have to do all the rest of this without him.
All this, and still, he was only my friend. My heart goes out to John and Susie, to whom he was a first born son, and to Arielle, to whom he was the world, and the missing piece.
I love you Mike, and I will miss you forever.
Next: The best day so far
Karen and I were with my parents, coming back from the airport late Sunday night when I got a phone call that Mike had been in a car accident. Five days later, it is still impossible that he's actually gone. We had big plans.
We shared: high school Japanese class for 4 years, the release of Final Fantasy III, discovering pot, the tennis team in high school, subverting the agenda of our senior yearbook from the inside, so much guitar playing and howling at my house (mudhoney to nirvana to built to spill to our own shit), the first day of college, secret conversations about our first serious girl friends, rock climbing (I remember one late night, crossing the UW campus after a party, me stupidly climbing 30 feet up a column outside of the Physics building, not being able to get down, and looking down at Mike, asking him to catch me right before I fell. I would've squashed him if he'd tried), being dorm mates for 2 quarters, living together again after my year away in Japan, driving up to Vancouver at 10 o clock on a September morning heading North over the curve of the Lions Gate bridge toward wilderness adventure...
What with 3 years of the JET program, and 2 years at grad school in Santa Barbara, Mike and I hadn't seen much of each other over the past 5 years. Pretty much what we could sneak in during my visits home for the holidays and such. He was waiting for me though. Waiting for me to move back here so we could pick up being brothers where we'd last had to put it down. It was 4 months ago when Mike started calling me in Santa Barbara, starting the work of convincing me that flying to Seattle for our 10 year high school reunion was somehow a good idea. I resisted at first, but thank god he broke me down. We were both so stoked when he pulled up in his honda sportscar at baggage claim to get me, and the reunion was actually a good, sloppy time.
We've been back up in Seattle now since Oct. 10th or so, and we got to see Mike a good number of times in the last two months. There was talk of house buying, of futures. And that's what I'll be trying to get my head around for the rest of my life, I think. How we could be having a cigarette, joking with my mom on the deck, finally reunited just last week, just like the old days, and now he's in the ground, and I will have to do all the rest of this without him.
All this, and still, he was only my friend. My heart goes out to John and Susie, to whom he was a first born son, and to Arielle, to whom he was the world, and the missing piece.
I love you Mike, and I will miss you forever.
Next: The best day so far