On the 5th anniversary of your death, I felt liberated and light, with a body of bird bones and powdered down, on the verge of flight. But on this 6th anniversary, it is the polar and the opposed.
Grief is like time, a nonlinear construct dressed as a sequential and organized line. It happens in a smatter, the explosion of sorrow that continues to drizzle, mist, and rain down for all eternity. Sometimes the rain quenches, and sometimes – like today – the rain is simply acid.
Records show your death as 04 October, but I believe you killed yourself on the indistinguishable stitch between midnight and 12:01, so I record your death as the day before. And since we found out hours before sunrise, how could the 4th day of October dawn when you were so gone?
Each anniversary of your death brings about a new mood - lost thoughts. Today’s mood is growl. Thinking of guilt. Everyone feels culpable when they are suicide-adjacent. The uncountable people at your funeral who approached me carrying fresh, unjustified guilt, as if they dragged suitcases to the service filled with dirty clothes that no one remembers packing. My wounds are heavy with shit and sand as I drag myself across the desert of ceaseless grief.
Blamable and Blameful.
Responsible self-reproach of immorality.
You told me specifically in your suicide text at 11:42 that “This is not your burden to bear. It was my doing. Goodbye my dearest friend, til we meet again,” but my brain glitched out that night, and taking the blame is at least a way to feel your weight.
Years ago, we sat at the window in your bedroom and watched the yearlings that I call “unspotted fawns.” You removed the screen so I could photograph them. I didn’t ask. I never had to ask. You just knew what some people needed. Like the time I had a craving for dark chocolate and you rolled over and pulled a bar out of your bedside table. So we sat, silent in our watching. You were the first person who made the silence calming. When I viewed the photos again this morning, they appeared an apt metaphor for our friendship. We were separate, we were bound, we were separate again. One deer walked away, and one stayed, but together we inhabited both ungulates. Neither deer is just you or just me. But I miss chewing grass by the tree.
If I could send letters to the afterlife, I’d collage you a card that says, “I’d like to be your intestine, all curled up in the warmth of your gut.”
You taught me to tell when the sun would set with only the fingers of our hands, but I couldn’t tell that you’d set yourself with the finger of a trigger. Ever celestial, you were the faraway star flickering in and out of existence to my human eye. You who could take my weight of body and mind. The soulest friend I’d ever known.
My heart hurts for you and yet I am happy you wrote this. It’s so painfully beautiful.
I’m sad that your heart is so heavy, but I’m thankful you’re willing to share that weight with us. May Juan’s memory be a blessing.