Micah
A childhood friend of mine was killed a couple of days ago in a head-on motorcycle accident. I hadn’t seen him in years; I guess we were friends from the age of nine up until we were about seventeen. He was seven months younger than me. We were both raised in the sort of church that had Wednesday night “home group” meetings that met in different people’s homes, and that’s how we knew each other. Occasionally, the group elders would decide that us kids weren’t required to sit in the worship, and we’d be turned loose in the backyard. This always led to girls vs boys wars, and I was always the de facto captain of the girls and he was the captain of the boys.
Our parents were friends, which meant that we were all over at each others’ houses for dinner all the time. There was a while in our early teens where we didn’t hang out at all, because he was hanging with my brother. They thought Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction was too dirty for me to listen to because I was a girl, and so they locked me out of the room.
I remember being over there and my brother somehow not being there. Micah's mom was inside watching TV. We stole the remote and snuck outside with it and a mirror. We figured out that if we turned our backs to the window and put the mirror in front of us where we could see the TV in it, we could aim the remote into the mirror and flip the channels or turn the whole thing off. We managed to drive her nuts for quite a while before she found us out.
He was the first person I watched Cheech and Chong movies with. He was the first person I watched Highlander with. He was the first person I watched the old Wayne and Garth skits on Saturday Night Live with. He had a black belt in taikwondo. He kept Einstein posters on his wall. I did too.
The last time I saw him was at my parents’ final Fourth of July party. We were sixteen, and walked up the street in the twilight, away from the adults. Things shifted, things were different. I didn’t kiss him. But I wanted to.
Then I lost track of him. He had a son when he was fairly young and then married about a year and half ago. And now he’s gone.
His funeral was yesterday. I didn't go.
I don’t know what to say after that.
Comments
I'm sorry to read this; it always catches me by surprise the way deaths closer to my past more than my present have such an impact.
During my last year of college, my neighbor and close friend from home overdosed on heroin and died. The two of us had shared our first drinks, first cigarettes, first joints, and so on since junior high, getting in trouble together many, many times. I spent so much time at her house that her drunk stepfather hit me like I was one of his own. Appetite for Destruction was a milestone album for us, too.
Somewhere along the line, though, I got my shit together and eventually went on to college, and she slipped further away, got busted for possession and dealing heroin once or twice, spent time in jail, had a baby, and died right after it was born.
I found out a few days after the funeral when I bumped into a friend of my brother's who was visiting my college, so I couldn't have made the funeral even if I'd wanted to. But I don't think I would've gone, anyway.
Posted by: steve | April 4, 2003 3:08 PM
*hugs* to both of you. I haven't had much experience with loss, but I know enough about it to know how long it hurts. I'm so sorry.
Posted by: Ailina | April 10, 2003 12:28 AM