Yesterday I attended the celebration of the life of a childhood friend who passed away in November. It was lovely to hear about the ways he touched so many people. Person after person - from all facets of his life and all different stages - described him similarly.
He was a bright star. He was the life of the party. He loved to have a good time and loved to make people laugh. He was adventurous. He liked to push the envelope and was able to challenge authority in charming ways that mostly kept him out of trouble. He was creative and curious. He was a prolific writer and thinker. He was entrepreneurial. And though he sought fame, he also treasured people as individuals. When he talked with you, you knew he was listening and interested. He made sure you knew you mattered. He was a good friend to many, many people. And in that way, he made a real difference.
As I listened to his sister read to us from some of their correspondence over the years, I was struck by his deep faith. And as his family members talked and shared how the group’s collective remembrance of my friend was an expression of faith (the community part of church - my words, not theirs), I was impressed with the peace they seemed to have reached. I’m not there yet.
After death, we try to remember people for their best parts - it’s how I want to be remembered. And that’s how I remember my friend.
But also I can’t seem to shake what came later for him in life. What I think makes his death so tragic.
My friend was 49. He had been diagnosed with a schizoaffective bipolar disorder 2 some time in the last decade or so. Up until then, I’d been following his adventures online- he was a balloon artist and a magician. He worked in Las Vegas as a performer.
But his social media posts took a turn. His once light-hearted song lyrics and stories became mean. He wrote screeds against family members that seemed inconsistent with what I knew to be true. I began to worry. Not an all-consuming, up-all-night kind of worrying. But a back-of-the-mind, constant itch.
My friend became homeless in my city. Not for lack of resources or support - more by choice. Or really by inability to make good choices, I suppose.
I would watch for him when I was out and about downtown, even though I wasn’t sure I’d recognize him if I saw him. I wondered how he was spending his holidays, if he knew how much his family missed him, and if he missed them, too.
But the intellectual side of me also knew that he had to choose the help that was available to him. He had to stay clean. He had to take medication to control the mental illness, and no one - no matter how strong their love - could do that for him. And so, instead, we waited. Or I waited. His family continuously reached out to him. Offered him their love and more material support. I am sure they felt his absence as he missed holidays and weddings and reunions. His death makes all this effort- all their outpouring of love- seem to me like it was meaningless or maybe wasted. And I think that’s what I’m struggling most with because I know it wasn’t for naught, even though it didn’t bring my friend back to them.
My sadness overwhelms in some moments, when I think of all that could have been and now will never be.
I don’t feel comfort in knowing he is out of pain. I don’t feel peace because of my faith. I feel angry. I am mad that his future was robbed by the disease. I am angry his family had to suffer at the hands of his mental illness, holding their collective breath in hope that he might recover and some former version of him might re-emerge. I don’t feel half-glass-full that he had so many bright, fun-loving years or grateful that the period of our lives that overlapped came predominantly before the difficulties his illness created. I am furious that his brain chemistry betrayed him.
I know this is my grief talking. I know my anger won’t change his last years or bring about a cure or convince some other person to seek and follow treatment. It won’t make his parents feel better about the child they lost twice, first to mental illness and then to death. But I cannot reason my way out of the sadness and the anger. Memories of his bright smile or his promise don’t offer me peace because they highlight what’s gone. I’m mad at him for not doing the work to get better. It’s so inconsistent with the kind of person he was- the loving, compassionate parts of him I knew. I’m furious at the randomness of it. The lack of logic to it.
One of my friends suggested that some of what I’m grieving is the loss of hope, the finality of it all. Because as long as he was alive, there was hope he could recover and come through the other side. Another friend suggested the grief is recognizing that because of our shared history, some of what I’m grieving is a loss of my own history. I think they’re both probably right.
I know, intellectually, that time will help heel my heart. I am not in this alone. I have friends and my own family who knew him, and we have grieved some together. But the grief feels lonely all the same.
