I’ve been keeping to myself in a very unhealthy, bitter way lately. I’m battling a major depression and I think starting to pull out of it, but that’s not what I want to talk about.
I’m a person who needs to believe that there is a purpose in life, even if I don’t believe in a higher power. I need to see the reason, the final result, of random events, try to tie them together. So I’m observing a sad, earth-shattering anniversary this weekend.
A year ago on Saturday my roommate and sort-of-adopted son Matthew died of a drug overdose. I was the one who found him. The repercussions of his death just keep on and on. I think to myself how wasteful it was. I think to myself that I have cried for a year. I think to myself that this is not just another statistic, another junkie overdose. It never is. It never is. The ways that the people we love touch us, and then leave us, especially when it doesn’t make sense, last forever.
What do you say about a man who wasn’t even 30 years old yet, who died in his bed with a needle in his arm? What do you say about the woman who knocked on his door to wake him up in the morning, only to get no response? What do you say about the children who didn’t understand? What do you say about a person who comes into your world, a person you immediately bond with, after you’ve been the witness to the most intimate moment of his existence? How do you live with waking up every morning with the image of him in your head?
He was an artist. He was a writer. He was so much, and so little in the end, this young man who threw it all away. And there are a million words I could say about him, there are a million ways I could memorialize him, from the altar in my room to his paintings on my wall, to the tears that come out of nowhere. But I think that in the end, at this point, Matthew would say to me that it’s time to move on, that I’ve hurt enough. So I take a deep breath. I hold his image for just a moment. I will come to a point where the sight of his coat or his shoes don’t make me break down. I will wake in the morning and not see him in his bed, in his room where he lived with me. I will be glad that he died in a home where he was loved, instead of on the Venice beach. I will remind myself that all the love in the world couldn’t stop him. I will take another deep breath and I will say it’s not right but it’s ok.
So finally, Matthew, goodbye. You are gone. Your ashes are gone, scattered, you are gone home to join your mom, you are ok now, I am ok, I will be ok, and we go on. And on we go.