Missing my bud
I have been having dreams about my best friend from my early years, who killed himself two years ago this August, for the last couple of months.
We were best friends from grade 7 to grade 12 and had known each other since we were 8 years old. We were inseperable. We did everything together. We even successfully picked up to friends who were working at the Boys and Girls Club in the East End. We got matching Canadian maple leaf tattoos...like I said, everything. After graduation we kinda started to drift apart with me joining the military and him not making it because he failed the entry exam's I.Q. test. After that moment he became more of a bitter man and not the fun loving guy I grew up with. We still hung out and partied and such, but he started drinking a little too much and after about a year or so, around the time when I met my first wife, we rarely hung out at all.
Time went by. Then more time. Then more time. When we saw each other we would always talk about the old days. It wasn't that we didn't like each other, it was just we were at different points in our lives. We always said we had to make plans to visit each others families, but neither one of us ever made the first move...
Then almost two years ago during my August ball tournament, I got a call from Doug that Jason had hung himself the night before. It was almost sureal. I honestly didn't believe it. I called my folks and told them, they didn't believe it either. No one could believe it. A young son and one on the way. I didn't make sense.
The funeral was hard. Walking up to the casket and seeing my friend, the person who I spent the formative years of my life with, was dead. Then I looked to the right and saw our graduation picture. There we are, back to back, mullets and all. That is when I lost it. I went over to the family, who were always like my second parents as I was there just as much as I was at my home, and mourned with them. Hugging his sister Janet, and her telling me he never stopped talking about me and wondering how I was, made me feel great and also mad at the same time. I was happy he never forgot about me, but also mad he never called.
I am still mad at him for doing something so selfish. But I don't know what his problems were. I wish I did. There is never an excuse for suicide, no matter how bad your problems are. It is easy for me to say though. I try not to look at it as him killing himself, but just as my buddy who died way too young.
There are dreams of us hanging out at the present time, in the past, and in the future doing a variety of things. Drinking beers with the kids running around in the yard...playing "balk" at Drew school...hanging out at the Boys and Girls Club trying (and in reality succeeding) to pick up Dana and Leeanne.
I guess I just really miss the guy.
Love you Jay...sorry I wasn't there for you buddy...
We were best friends from grade 7 to grade 12 and had known each other since we were 8 years old. We were inseperable. We did everything together. We even successfully picked up to friends who were working at the Boys and Girls Club in the East End. We got matching Canadian maple leaf tattoos...like I said, everything. After graduation we kinda started to drift apart with me joining the military and him not making it because he failed the entry exam's I.Q. test. After that moment he became more of a bitter man and not the fun loving guy I grew up with. We still hung out and partied and such, but he started drinking a little too much and after about a year or so, around the time when I met my first wife, we rarely hung out at all.
Time went by. Then more time. Then more time. When we saw each other we would always talk about the old days. It wasn't that we didn't like each other, it was just we were at different points in our lives. We always said we had to make plans to visit each others families, but neither one of us ever made the first move...
Then almost two years ago during my August ball tournament, I got a call from Doug that Jason had hung himself the night before. It was almost sureal. I honestly didn't believe it. I called my folks and told them, they didn't believe it either. No one could believe it. A young son and one on the way. I didn't make sense.
The funeral was hard. Walking up to the casket and seeing my friend, the person who I spent the formative years of my life with, was dead. Then I looked to the right and saw our graduation picture. There we are, back to back, mullets and all. That is when I lost it. I went over to the family, who were always like my second parents as I was there just as much as I was at my home, and mourned with them. Hugging his sister Janet, and her telling me he never stopped talking about me and wondering how I was, made me feel great and also mad at the same time. I was happy he never forgot about me, but also mad he never called.
I am still mad at him for doing something so selfish. But I don't know what his problems were. I wish I did. There is never an excuse for suicide, no matter how bad your problems are. It is easy for me to say though. I try not to look at it as him killing himself, but just as my buddy who died way too young.
There are dreams of us hanging out at the present time, in the past, and in the future doing a variety of things. Drinking beers with the kids running around in the yard...playing "balk" at Drew school...hanging out at the Boys and Girls Club trying (and in reality succeeding) to pick up Dana and Leeanne.
I guess I just really miss the guy.
Love you Jay...sorry I wasn't there for you buddy...