steve

Last night, I told a story about you and didn't go on to explain that you were dead now.

It's the first time that's happened, and I saw it go by and felt the urge to tell the rest of the story, but I didn't want to be a downer.

Last week, I cried in a bar over you because I tried to explain to a friend that you are always on my mind, ever since you died, more than you were when you were alive maybe, maybe not, it's hard to know because I have all these memories of you, and since you died, all of those memories have turned up sharp edges. So now, every time a memory of you goes by, it nicks me just a little. All those memories of laughing so hard we couldn't breathe make me cry now. Like now.

I see you all the time now. Every dark head, every tall man, every long arm is you for just a second, for long enough that sometimes I have to blink really hard, because I'm staring at strangers and I probably look like I've been shot. Like I've been shot. That's funny. You would laugh.

I don't know how to get past this. We weren't even that close, especially there at the end. There was a time when we talked a lot, but I would never have called us especially close. I don't know. We hadn't talked in years, maybe, when you took a gun nobody knew you had into the woods and shot yourself instead of going to work.

it's fucking me up and I don't know how to get past it. So I tried writing it out to a friend, and this is how it went.

I get stuck on things, sometimes for years. A friend of mine killed himself a couple of years ago and it's really only now starting to get to me how stuck I am on that. I don't know if that makes any sense, the way I've phrased it. I had this friend, one half of a married couple who had been together since they were in high school, and I met this couple through my ex husband, back when we were married, because they all went to high school together. They were sort of our main "couple friends," meaning, we'd go to their house for card games or parties or whatever, and they came down to the Gulf Coast to visit us a few times when we were married and lived there. We were all close. We had a lot of fun together. We laughed a lot. My ex husband used to set up a video camera (that's how long ago this was) and set it to film us as we sat in a circle talking, and after a while we'd forget it was there. Everyone just got used to it. James had sort of an obsession with chronicling everything. I remember he recorded the news broadcasts of the 911 attacks for something like 48 hours afterward? Anyway, him putting a camera on us wasn't out of character. Everybody just rolled with it (nyuck, nyuck), and it ended up capturing some of those hilarious stories that otherwise might have been lost to the fog of bad memories. There were a ton of great stories. Steve told some of the best stories. 

Steve was always the guy who would do anything. He was the bravest, the ballsiest, the guy with the loudest laugh. He lit up the room. He and his wife had a tumultuous relationship. She had a hot temper, he had poor impulse control, he played in bands and frequently had girls sort of throw themselves at him -- the marriage wasn't perfect. Misty, his wife (his widow, since remarried), is lovely in her own right. They were a good couple, for all their disasters, I always thought. 

We didn't talk for a couple of years after James and I divorced, and then Misty sought me out and we reconnected. I hung out with them a few times, and then sort of drifted away like I usually do. But I liked being friends again. It was good to talk it out with them and have Misty tell me, "We love you for you." And it was good to have the awkwardness taken away. After the divorce, it was tricky navigating some of the friendships. You know, the custody battle over the friendships that happen when relationships end? James brought most of the friends into the relationship, so he ended up with most of them when it ended, and that made sense. But I appreciated the people who made an effort. And Steve and Misty were special. I just loved them, kind of from the get-go.

But we didn't have the kind of friendship that needed daily maintenance (friendships like that are doomed for me), and I hadn't talked to either of them in months, maybe a year, when my sister sent me a text. I think it was a text. She said she had seen something on Facebook and she hoped it was a joke, even a bad one, but she thought Steve might have died. I looked at the post, I don't remember exactly what it was, but I hoped it was a joke too. And I think I texted James. I don't know, I reached out to him in some way. And he confirmed it, and I've been baffled ever since. 

 Your daughter is having a baby. Isn't that crazy? What are we supposed to do without you, dude?