I have written here before about the friend I lost. Matt. My boyfriend. My best friend. He killed himself when I was 19 and he was 20.
It is hard to believe that I lost him 16 years ago this past April. Last year, the night before the 15th anniversary of his death, I made a last minute decision to visit a friend. I spent that anniversary making the very long drive to visit a someone who lives far, far away. I didn’t tell anyone why I needed so suddenly and so desperately to run away. I spent nearly that entire drive listening to mix tapes he made for me when we were young and tragically in love, tears running down my face as I drove over the mountains of West Virginia.
The tapes are still in my car. I suppose they always will be, at least until I have a car that doesn’t have a tape deck any more. In the back of my head, I think they are a talisman. A tiny piece of Matt who would never let anything bad happen to me. In a darker moment, I would admit if I died in a car accident, I feel better knowing he will be there with me.
Last year, I got in touch with his sister again. She was my good friend but we never spoke after he died, for almost 15 years. Last summer, I met her sons. One named for Matt, one who looked just like him. I spent that visit imagining how he would be with his nephews. How he would have been if we had children together. That old grief rose close to the surface again. I could taste it. I could feel that the hole his death punched through me hadn’t closed up. There was no protective scar, just a gaping wound that had gone unnoticed for a while.
This year was the first year I didn’t feel I needed to stop my life on the anniversary of his death. Thoughts of Matt don’t visit quite as often as they used to. It is a relief, but it makes me sad too. I miss him. I even miss the sad feeling of thinking of him when I don’t do it for a while.
Last year, for the first time, I allowed myself to imagine what would happen if I had 10 minutes with him now. I walked through the way I would embrace him, looking for the hands I remember, smelling his neck, rubbing his scruffy chin. I would study his ears, because I can’t remember them any more. In my imagination, this only takes a few minutes. By the second five minutes, I allow myself to be just a little bit angry.
“How could you have done this to me? How could you be so selfish? You left me damaged forever. I will never not be missing you. I will never be the person I was before again.”
“I know. I am so sorry.” he would reply. I remember exactly how his arms would have felt around me. I know it is the truth. He would have been so sorry to know that escaping his pain meant I would carry his loss with me through my entire life.
When I decided to search for L’s family, I would light incense from time to time. I would watch the smoke trail up, carrying my good intentions. ”Matt,” I would think,” Make this happen for her. Make her hole a little bit smaller.” Now I know L’s hole won’t really be smaller. It will only be different.
After Matt died, I couldn’t imagine a future as good as the life I have today. Those first dark months — years, really– I couldn’t imagine much of a future at all. I could only focus on putting one foot in front of the next. Getting through one day at a time. I felt like my grief was etched on my face for the world to see. How could anyone look at me and not see my suffering? I could feel his absence in every single breath I took. The black hole of grief sucked away my ability to even imagine joy again.
But life marches on. Here I am living this amazing life with my beautiful family. This life is built on that loss. I can’t have one without the other.
As beautiful as my family is and as much as I love my husband now, I would rewrite history if I could. I would move heaven and earth if I thought I could keep Matt on this planet, in this life. No one would volunteer for that kind of loss just to get a happy ending.
Most of us won’t make it through our lives without surviving a terrible loss. Grief is for the living. It is remembering the past and the loss of possibilities (the what might have been, but will never be now). We will carry those holes with us through the rest of our journey. We might never be whole again. I know now, we don’t have to be whole to have happiness– to have a good life. All these years later, I know my grief will come and go and come and go. After 16 years, I still carry it with me. I think I always will.
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Today, I spent my afternoon reading Signs of Life by Natalie Taylor. It was a memoir of widowhood, so well written, I found myself reliving Matt’s death and my grief. It was a little bit like finding sisterhood in my sadness after all these years. That is no small thing.
