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I haven't been in a cemetery in years
Jun. 20th, 2012 06:37 pmToday was stranger and harder.
Half the sky was light, with white clouds and the deep blue sky. The other was grey thunderheads. It rumbled all during the ceremony. When we left for the cemetery it was all overcast and when I left to come home it was all light. I don't even know. I listened to Matt's timelapse music in the car on repeat in the endless procession to the cemetery, with police officers on motorcycles stopping traffic for us and so many cars stretching for miles. I smoked and cried and knocked ash all over my black trousers.
I haven't been in a Baptist church since I was a kid living with my grandparents. There were so many people taking video and cameras, it was like being at a wedding.
He was there again. I cried when I saw his pallbearers wearing Converse. I wore mine, because I know James would have liked them. His supervisor from work approached me to tell me so, and I told him about the time we made James snort artificial sugar off the table at Denny's. The people around us laughed. Of course James would do something like that.
Listening to his friends talk about how he always did the things that made people laugh, how he always reached out to people, especially people who were alone or outcast or who needed love... That's when I about lost it. Because he was always just quietly there for me in our friendship. Clearly he was always that way. I'm glad that something good endured in him and that he never lost that quality.
His father spoke and by then I was crying silently. I don't know if their relationship was better than it was back when we were kids. But Richard really pulled it out to say something good and beautiful for him.
The cemetery is full of live oaks, one of those green forests in the middle of the city that you find yourself in and wonder how it managed to survive. It's very beautiful in that way. I couldn't stay to see him go into the ground, I just couldn't.
I found Richard at the cemetery and said "You probably don't recognize me but I used to spend weekends at your apartment..." He grabbed me and hugged me so hard that I started crying all over again. He has a picture of James and I hanging up in his living room, from that endless summer. Back at the church reception, his mother Miriam found me. She remembered driving to my house so very many times to drop James off, and all the time we spent together. She told me some of how James spent his life in the past decade and all the good he did and the goofy things. I spoke to his wife Esther again as well. She was infinitely kind and hugged me again. I can't imagine having been so close to perfect, so happy and losing it this way.
At the reception, I drank terrible church coffee and didn't eat anything. Now I'm drinking a beer and I should probably eat something but I feel so damn tired and fucked up and sad that I can't quite bring myself to do it. I'm going to send Mike to get fast food.
I don't ever want to do this again. It's too horrible. The worst part is that I know someday I'll have to, because people fucking die and there's nothing, utterly nothing I can do about it. That makes me want to scream and hit things and claw something out of the universe, bend the passage of time to my will somehow and make it so he doesn't have to die. It fucks me up so badly.
Oh James. You are so loved. You moved so many people. You did so much that was good in this world.
Half the sky was light, with white clouds and the deep blue sky. The other was grey thunderheads. It rumbled all during the ceremony. When we left for the cemetery it was all overcast and when I left to come home it was all light. I don't even know. I listened to Matt's timelapse music in the car on repeat in the endless procession to the cemetery, with police officers on motorcycles stopping traffic for us and so many cars stretching for miles. I smoked and cried and knocked ash all over my black trousers.
I haven't been in a Baptist church since I was a kid living with my grandparents. There were so many people taking video and cameras, it was like being at a wedding.
He was there again. I cried when I saw his pallbearers wearing Converse. I wore mine, because I know James would have liked them. His supervisor from work approached me to tell me so, and I told him about the time we made James snort artificial sugar off the table at Denny's. The people around us laughed. Of course James would do something like that.
Listening to his friends talk about how he always did the things that made people laugh, how he always reached out to people, especially people who were alone or outcast or who needed love... That's when I about lost it. Because he was always just quietly there for me in our friendship. Clearly he was always that way. I'm glad that something good endured in him and that he never lost that quality.
His father spoke and by then I was crying silently. I don't know if their relationship was better than it was back when we were kids. But Richard really pulled it out to say something good and beautiful for him.
The cemetery is full of live oaks, one of those green forests in the middle of the city that you find yourself in and wonder how it managed to survive. It's very beautiful in that way. I couldn't stay to see him go into the ground, I just couldn't.
I found Richard at the cemetery and said "You probably don't recognize me but I used to spend weekends at your apartment..." He grabbed me and hugged me so hard that I started crying all over again. He has a picture of James and I hanging up in his living room, from that endless summer. Back at the church reception, his mother Miriam found me. She remembered driving to my house so very many times to drop James off, and all the time we spent together. She told me some of how James spent his life in the past decade and all the good he did and the goofy things. I spoke to his wife Esther again as well. She was infinitely kind and hugged me again. I can't imagine having been so close to perfect, so happy and losing it this way.
At the reception, I drank terrible church coffee and didn't eat anything. Now I'm drinking a beer and I should probably eat something but I feel so damn tired and fucked up and sad that I can't quite bring myself to do it. I'm going to send Mike to get fast food.
I don't ever want to do this again. It's too horrible. The worst part is that I know someday I'll have to, because people fucking die and there's nothing, utterly nothing I can do about it. That makes me want to scream and hit things and claw something out of the universe, bend the passage of time to my will somehow and make it so he doesn't have to die. It fucks me up so badly.
Oh James. You are so loved. You moved so many people. You did so much that was good in this world.