Can your dead friends guilt trip you from beyond the grave?
It's possible that yesterday, I might not have thought about Mike at all. Or if I did, it was insufficiently traumatic to cause any breakdowns that I remember today. So today it appears he decided to remind me. I got a text from Cici about him. I signed on to LiveJournal and a reminder for his birthday had popped up on my dashboard. And then there was the package.
Randolph, Mike's boyfriend at the time of his death, called me on Friday to let me know he and his new partner are moving and he was sending me some stuff that he thought Mike would want me to have. I anticipated long-lost letters or photos of/by Mike (or in a perfect world, my Buffy season 5 that Mike borrowed and never returned). The package was waiting for me on the table when I came home tonight.
The contents were a puzzlement. A children's book and some cartoon pages I had never seen before, a luggage ID tag written in Mike's best (read: least-indecipherable) handwriting, and a red silk box. Inside the box was something wrapped in bubble paper. I thought, one of his ceramic pandas? But when I pulled open the bubble paper, I found a curious, alchemical-looking glass vial, with a blown-glass stopper, containing a greyish-brown powder. I was stumped for a second, until I realized what I was holding, and then I almost dropped it.
Rand had sent me Mike's ashes. Or at least part of them. In the fucking mail. Without telling me what he was sending. I put the thing back in the red silk box, put the box back in the carton, and noticed some papers folded up in there, crammed between packing peanuts. I thought, okay, he's written some sort of explanation. Taking a deep breath, I unfolded the papers. Instead of a note, I found a photocopy of Mike's death certificate and birth certificate. I put everything back in the box, all of it, hurriedly, and felt conflicting impulses to wash my hands or cry. Why the hell would someone send something like that?
Many phone calls later discerned that Rand thought he had told me, but it just slipped his mind, and that this has been Mike's wish, it had just taken Rand two years to get around to it.
Am I crazy, weird or unfeeling for not wanting any part of this? Nothing in the box Rand sent means anything to me except for loathing.
I don't need a piece of his body. I know he's gone. I don't want the thing at all.
Hey, Cherry Top: uncool, man. Very uncool.
Randolph, Mike's boyfriend at the time of his death, called me on Friday to let me know he and his new partner are moving and he was sending me some stuff that he thought Mike would want me to have. I anticipated long-lost letters or photos of/by Mike (or in a perfect world, my Buffy season 5 that Mike borrowed and never returned). The package was waiting for me on the table when I came home tonight.
The contents were a puzzlement. A children's book and some cartoon pages I had never seen before, a luggage ID tag written in Mike's best (read: least-indecipherable) handwriting, and a red silk box. Inside the box was something wrapped in bubble paper. I thought, one of his ceramic pandas? But when I pulled open the bubble paper, I found a curious, alchemical-looking glass vial, with a blown-glass stopper, containing a greyish-brown powder. I was stumped for a second, until I realized what I was holding, and then I almost dropped it.
Rand had sent me Mike's ashes. Or at least part of them. In the fucking mail. Without telling me what he was sending. I put the thing back in the red silk box, put the box back in the carton, and noticed some papers folded up in there, crammed between packing peanuts. I thought, okay, he's written some sort of explanation. Taking a deep breath, I unfolded the papers. Instead of a note, I found a photocopy of Mike's death certificate and birth certificate. I put everything back in the box, all of it, hurriedly, and felt conflicting impulses to wash my hands or cry. Why the hell would someone send something like that?
Many phone calls later discerned that Rand thought he had told me, but it just slipped his mind, and that this has been Mike's wish, it had just taken Rand two years to get around to it.
Am I crazy, weird or unfeeling for not wanting any part of this? Nothing in the box Rand sent means anything to me except for loathing.
I don't need a piece of his body. I know he's gone. I don't want the thing at all.
Hey, Cherry Top: uncool, man. Very uncool.