Storied By Josh

“I’ll come down and see you sooner or later.” It might have been the fourth time in as many months that I had said it. “We’ll hang out.”
“I miss you man.”
“I miss you too.”
Still I avoid the trip to his town for too long because it is long.
The road is long to the town where one can see the mountains touch the water. There, in that town, the rocks spill from the hill with grass, onto the beach and into the bay. A spit of land pushes as far as one dares into the ocean and when the sun rises it is a most beautiful thing that most people will never see. The town sleeps and awakes, mostly alone and happy for it.

Anna sits beside me and I drive. To get there is an all day trip. I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen before I came to see you and tell you I love you.

The last time I saw my friend’s little brother (the boy), I was thinking of a way to avoid him and maybe not talk to him. But in true fashion, he imposed himself on me and I was duty bound to entertain him.
I am so glad I did. The last time I saw the boy alive…we had a good time. He had cleaned up, quit drinking. He was a handsome man with a future not as mine but I never doubted I’d see him again. Now I think that maybe there’s a moment that I can remember with joy for him. I took my friend and his brother to a video game store, full of retro cartridges and our childhood. We laughed, talked, and remembered. And these things that are so important in the moment…our differences, were not there. The boy was beautiful.

This visit will be different. The boy is leaving.

 

We arrive in the evening. Anna and I stop at the boy’s parents to say hello and how are you. The boy’s father is crying and I do not know what to do because this is an empty world for him now, at least a little. So I hug him and everyone is holding each other, either physically or with these words, the way people do.

My friend doesn’t drink anymore. It affected his health. But tonight, the night before the boy’s funeral, is a night to drink and I ask him these things that should never have to be asked to anyone. He answers with answers that no one should ever have to answer. My friend doesn’t cry the entire time we visit. He smiles and he laughs. When I hug him I see him. His eyes are broken and tired. His embrace is forlorn.

I’m sorry that this is only ever us now.

He says he is avoiding dealing with this. It is not my place to advise. I drunkenly try to anyway and invariably come back around to “It just sucks so much.” He tells me the family were hugging each other after the boy died in the hospital. His little sister said something about how “this is us now.” And he died some with the boy. He died some and they died some and now as we drink beers in the dying light on a deck overlooking the bay I am dying some too. He says goodbye to me and bravely walks into his home.

 

The next day I am sick. My family comes to where me and Anna are staying. I look at them, my parents and my brothers. I never will be ready to say goodbye to them. I try desperately to not think of this, like my friend avoids now and it is hard because they are beautiful. We visit together in the small place. We avoid the topic of the reason we are here.

 

The funeral for the boy is beautiful and his little sister sings a song with his brother that she wrote. Anna cries and cries beside me. Her tears try desperately to drown this pain that burns in our chests but it does not. Still it tries.

An old and powerful sorrow emanates from the boy’s father. His sob threatens to ruin what he says. He throws his arms out and gestures madly to us and emerges from his pit. His father tells us when the boy was was born, he wasn’t meant to live. The doctors told the family he would die. But the boy never gave up. The father grieves here. He loves. He pleads. “If you have something with someone, forgive them. Forgive them now! It’s not worth it!” His missteps and transgressions spill in front of him, a towering damnation in his eyes, but that is not what is really there. It is really a father’s breaking heart. It is a soaring eagle of a father’s love for his son and I cannot help it. I cannot help it. I fall with him. We all fall with him.

My friend plays a goodbye. He has been brave today. His father could not say some things and he took up the burden and stood out, a knight for his family. Only now he breaks as his heart says goodbye. His mother says nothing during the funeral. Her grief cannot be expressed with words or with song. It is the pain only mothers will ever know. I cannot touch it. Some others stand and tell these stories. The boy always helped work on things. The boy was a pain in the neck. The boy had so many friends and they bravely cry for us. They cry for the family. They remember. The boy isn’t forgotten. The boy wasn’t perfect. But above all, even though the boy was never meant to live past a certain age he endured and lived. He lived.

So this is for him. Because now even as some of us die with him, he still is here with us. So long as there are memories, he will live and endure.

The preacher begins a line of propaganda and I leave to the lobby of the church to be alone. It is done. I look at a picture of the boy there on a table. Next to it is a book that is meant to say goodbye but I cannot think of what to say. Because it is finished and everything I should have I did not when I had time. If only I had held the boy instead of shoved him. If only I had loved him instead of hated him. If only if only if only if only and it doesn’t matter. It is so too late.

So my hand shakes and I give up. I put the pen down and I walk out to the daylight. There was talk during the funeral and they said the boy was not perfect and this is true, but perfect things can never be beautiful. Beautiful is better than perfect, always.

 

We gather at the home. The boy’s father tells me to make a fire outside where we young friends can sit and visit, I do. My friend comes out and my brothers are there. We stand and sit around the fire pit, telling jokes as if these things are not related to this. The boy’s sister comes out. She is a woman now. She laughs with us and we take her and my friend to dinner. He does not wish to talk about this funeral and we are so tired. We manage to move on again, like we always have, through each other. I want to hold him and tell him this will always hurt but that we can hurt together, because it is a type of pain no one should feel alone. He drinks a little so his sister drives him home. It is not her first time driving a manual but it is close. My brother and I watch her struggle and laugh good naturedly at her. Then we too leave.

Before they started out as my friend got into the passenger’s seat he turns to me and looks over his shoulder. “I love you.” He says. It is a moment in time and place I will never forget.

 

The sun sets as we drive away. Anna sleeps late the next morning. I cannot and before the sun rises I find a place on a hill, alone. I watch the sunrise over where the mountains meet the water. I hear the seagulls sing good morning to each other. They swoop down to the ocean below as the sun glistens of the shimmering surface. It warms me. Here in this town the warmth of the light is rare and soon enough the clouds steal away what is precious.

I say goodbye as the boy leaves. The sun shines beautifully through a veil until it can’t be seen anymore.

In Remembrance of Clinton James Johnson