Escaping Artist

You missed a great year for the merciless banter you loved. We would have teased you endlessly for turning 30 before the rest of us, and I would have spent an afternoon searching for a delightfully horrible card to commemorate the beginning of us “getting old.” You, on the other hand, could have made humorous stuff from my being separated at twenty-five after a long and perplexed marriage. As funny as a truckload of dead babies you might have said, and rightfully so.

It is too easy to be disappointed with people who have died. We expect them, though perhaps not literally, to be alive in all the ways we expect people who are alive to be. We want friends when alone, comfort when upset, consolation when afraid, advice when lost. The deceased, no matter how much we loved and miss them, do not readily provide these living human functions, which is perhaps why we miss them more, or most, in times of need. Damn it, can’t you just wander in while I am sleeping and give me your take on this situation? I catch myself every so often thinking these things and selfishly wishing you could be a little bit here even while still being there.

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I am looking out the window of the plane en route to new york. The sun is setting over clouds that have finally stopped shaking the beer can we are flying in, and the view is breathtaking. It is awkward to be so high, but it’s a view I can never resist, and since it will be dark when I fly over the east, I am enjoying the window seat while it still matters.

At the risk of sounding cliché, I can’t help but state that the wedding was truly beautiful. It was everything I think the bride wanted it to be; simple, nontraditional, sentimental, and meaningful. Despite the rebellion my generation instinctively feels toward the traditions of feminine ownership, I understand why we love weddings. Property matters aside, it is a lovely way to come together as a group and celebrate something good. Love, even when it does not last, in the moment that it is true, is a glorious thing to toast—birth, death, and love. The details of weddings only matter because they too are icons of a kind of shared beauty. Flowers, friends, silks and satins are simply the manner in which we reflect a feeling, and our sentiment.

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Two years does not seem to be a very significant marker when you are expecting a lifetime more, but two years in reverse, two years since so many things, is almost unbelievable. Despite all that has changed since you left, I am still amazed by how much we miss our friend.

You have become an elusive man to pin down; you come and go from my life now that I don’t force you to exist tangibly through my artwork. The thesis was the culmination of a one sided relationship I could not maintain. I can’t force myself to remember you, and I can’t choose to forget, so you exist spontaneously now in undulating waves of joy and sorrow.

I listened to your songs today, at work, on the train, at home, and now while I write, the songs of your death. It was not inappropriate to do so, nor morbid, because today is the day you died; they are beautiful songs. They are not the tunes you played for me in life, though I know you did, they are the songs we chose to describe our sorrow. These few have become the descriptive moments of a passing I still remember a little too clearly.

And I have discovered you learn to live with grief the way you learn to live with yourself. I still feel the regret and disappointment, but without the desperation.

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I admit it, I forgot your birthday, not suggesting, however, I would not have anyway. Lately dreams have been a tangled mass of confusion, I thought it was an overdose of drug related moves, most recently Fear and Loathing; I am sure you would approve. But you being wrapped up in the mix is not so ordinary, I dream mostly of ghostly places not people.

How many birthdays was I there for, I wonder, it is a pity I don’t remember them. I remember one in 1999 or so. I have a visual picture of your card, fancy black lettering of your name covering a yellow envelope. You were impressed and I was surprised. I was glad you noticed, but I think I gave you an ugly card, something designed to annoy, perhaps a palm tree. I remember that look we would exchange that went through the solid barriers of people. It’s an inconvenience I don’t remember more, instead I remember the kinds of things I would rather forget. Last night I found there really is no way to think about you that is not painful.

You will age with us, what would it be, 29? You will always haunt us with your youth, because in our minds you never will age. I suppose we carry you on the only way we know how, forcing our memory of you to care about the things we still care about, getting older, celebrating our own existence. So, without doodles or cards or looks between friends, happy birthday.

When I tell people, as an explanation for specific recent work, that my best friend died last year they have a variety of reactions, but I can count upon receiving self-assured commiseration. There seems to be a prevalent attitude from such sympathizers that, while they may not understand the particulars they can understand the devastation. This seems reasonable at first thought, but when considered seriously it shows how meaningless death can become when it is not in any way related to ourselves. Answering such questions as could this work be seen as therapy forced me to seriously reconsider given sympathies, and question the extent to which a person can allow themself to grasp an unpleasant situation when the shattering nature of it has not been directly felt. Whether it is a hard worked at selfishness or an innate limitation of the human capacity to “feel” (I sometimes wonder if it is necessary to function as I can hardly stand to watch a plant wilt) there seems to be a clear line of how much I can understand of such situations for others and therefore others of mine. Watching the French film Joyeux Noel I cringed the moment the differing forces entered the battlefield made neutral by the appearance of Christmas. Knowing nothing of warfare and disregarding notions about the films “accuracy” I guessed or felt this holiday from war was going to make it nearly impossible for them to kill each other the following morning. Could this zone of personal interaction be lacking in discussions around and reactions to work dealing with death and loss of an unusual and intimate kind? I wonder about these notions of imposed limitation while fully acknowledging the fault could lie in my execution and explanation of these ideas. If these limitations are a truthful part of human nature, however defined, why then is there such a predilection toward false emotion and deference? Is it simply the upholding of a cultural custom, similar to the question “how are you?” that is asked without the slightest fear of it being answered? A wince and exclamation of “so young” can be surprisingly more honest than dismissive questions or an unhealthy curiosity for details—“how large was the tumor?”

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