Not A Eulogy

I am not writing your goddamn eulogy.

I don’t think that suicides deserve a eulogy.

A suicide’s eulogy is scraped into the bloody tracks on her arms. A suicide’s eulogy is written on the rope around his neck. A suicide’s eulogy is printed in the grooves of the pills she swallows.

It’s always the same, it’s the same story every time: I lived, I died. What happens in between is incidental. What happens in between is what kills us.

This isn’t an apology. I’ve been mourning you for two years now, did you know that? It’s you who should apologize.

This is not for you.

It’s for me, and it’s also for this blog I write with my friend. You never met this friend; he wasn’t part of our Inuvik group. I guess I’m exploiting your death to wring a few tears out of my readers, but I have a feeling that’s okay. When you leave, you really leave. Who cares if I get five hundred words out of your death? Another week’s duty done.

I didn’t know what else to write about this week. All I can think about is you. Goddamn you.

(This is nothing new.)

I think that you would have liked the blog. I think you’d be the one person I could always count on to read my posts.

(That hurts a bit, to think about.)

I think you’d want to meet my friend Zach. You both like to talk - a lot. That’s okay. I’m patient, I’m a listener. You and me, we would go for coffee and smoke a pack each. Remember those days? You could still smoke inside back then, at least in Inuvik. We would sit at the Caribou Café for hours, talking about politics and movies and gossip. We thought we were better than everyone else because we read the Globe and Mail every day.

Do you remember when we met? It was almost ten years ago, can you believe it? I worked in the kitchen at the Finto, washing dishing, making salads, preparing desserts. You were a waiter, and you wouldn’t even say hello to me for weeks. Then one evening I was having a smoke in the break room, and somehow we struck up a conversation about books. You decided I was suitable company and not a stupid kitchen-bitch; I decided that, while you were clearly arrogant and a bit shallow, you knew books and I could spare a smoke or two for a conversation. The rest, as they say, is fucking history.

I’m not interested in writing our history. It’s a story that is full of secrets (your and mine) and all the private jokes of a long friendship. I won’t share any of that.

Sometimes it hurts more than anything, so goddamn much, to carry around your secrets.

You loved Motown. I remember how surprised you were when I said I loved Motown too. I played you a CD I made, Aretha and the Temptations and Smokey Robinson, that time you visited me when I tore the tendons in my ankle and couldn’t work. You brought me food and money for take-out, I couldn’t leave my house because of the stairs. Remember our apartment buildings in Inuvik? You lived in Parkview, I lived across the street in Lakeview. There are no basements in Inuvik because of the permafrost, and both of our buildings were hoisted two stories above the ground, on stilts and up those awful, terrifying steps. How many times did we both stumble home drunk, up those stairs?

I’m listening to Motown right now.

I remember everything. I’ve packed away these memories, filed and stacked them, and left them to the dust, but I still remember everything. Everything goddamn thing.

(I can’t.)

You were funny as hell. You always made me laugh. You pissed me off a lot too. The best people do, I’ve found.

(I am still so mad at you.)

I keep going back to this, this one fucking wish – I wish you had lived long enough to read this blog. I’ve done my best writing here. I didn’t write much when we were friends, except for our daily emails. I think that you would be proud of me.

(Why did you leave me.)

I’m reading a book right now that I think you would have liked.

(That hurts.)

You’ve missed a lot of really great movies.

(I try not to think like this.)

I miss your emails.

I don’t use that email address anymore. I kept it for you, did you know that? I stopped using it well before you died, started up a Hotmail account, but I kept Yahoo open for you. That ways I always knew that if I had a new email, it was from you.

I still have your last email, saved. I haven’t read it in two years. It has no subject line, which was unusual.

(I should have seen the signs).

I have no idea what you wrote.

(I don’t want to know.)

I don’t think that I will ever read it.

(You said goodbye in a hotel room in Arizona, you didn't say a word.)

All I want to say is goodbye. All I want is for you to go away. You can go now.

I’m going to visit your grave some time this summer. I will give back all of your secrets when I’m there.

I feel so heavy these days. I cannot carry the burden of you.

(Jimmy, I am so, so sad without you.)

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.