I lost my best friend early morning, Wednesday, March 18. Well, that's not exactly true. On Wednesday, the body where my best friend once lived stopped working. In truth, my best friend had been lost for a long time. The odd thing is that I am finally starting to find him again now that he's gone. I've decided to start this page as a place to help me process and keep his memory alive. New memories will just be added to the bottom of the page, journal-style.3/21/2015:
About a week ago, I was sharing my philosophy on Regret with a friend. It goes a little something like this: I do not believe in Regret. I believe that we make choices in everything we do. Hopefully, we make smart choices, but sometimes we don't. Regretting a poor choice means living in the past, saying "I wish I hadn't made that choice" instead of doing anything to improve ourselves. However, as long as we learn from these experiences and vow to make better choices in the future, there is no need to regret the choices that ultimately made us wiser. Right? Therefore, Regret does not exist. QED. There you go. A neat little logical proof of the regret-free philosophy that has served me pretty well since I concocted it in high school. Then my best friend died and Regret suddenly became very real. I have to at least confront it and try to learn from it. Here goes. I regret a lot of things that can basically be summed up as: I regret not being a better friend to Rob.
In the past few days I have received phone calls and messages from dozens of people offering their condolences for Rob's passing. I have communicated with old friends from high school and from Moe, with Rob's family, with friends of his I've never met from California, Idaho, and Arizona...all contacting me because they knew what great friends we were and how much Rob loved me. As I responded to over 40 people in one 36 hour period, I began to feel more and more like a fraud. Everyone thought I was this great friend, but I hadn't really been there for Rob for a long time. More than the 500 miles between us, I had told Rob a few times in the past few years that I had to create emotional distance because I couldn't handle watching my best friend slowly dying. I am now so grateful that he refused to accept my emotional rejection and, I think, still believed that I was his best friend to the end.
Rob had been very sick for a long time with a disease that none of us want to talk about. I refuse to let his death be in vain, though, so it's time to get it out there. Rob was an alcoholic. That won't be on the death certificate, and he had a host of other medical problems, but I know alcoholism is what killed him. His friends and family tried for years to get him the help he needed, but he just couldn't seem to find his way to healthy.
The most tragic thing about this disease is that while treatable, it's ultimately up to the addict to seek out and accept the "cure". If left untreated, it is lethal. Unfortunately, at a certain point, the addict's loved ones start to distance themselves from watching the repeated self-destruction. Imagine your reaction to a diabetic who refused to take insulin, or to someone with a broken leg who refused to see a doctor. Would we sit back and watch? Of course we wouldn't, because life-saving treatments for these conditions exist, and it would be foolish to die from gangrene in 21st century America. So why is alcoholism any different? I think it's because we "normies" (my brother's word for me) don't really understand the power of this disease. We think it's just about willpower and we simply don't understand how someone could consciously choose to keep killing themselves instead of using a little willpower. Just don't drink, right? Here's what we "normies" need to understand: addiction is a real disease. In order to treat it, we as a society have to recognize it as a real disease. We have to understand that telling an addict to just stop drinking or using is the equivalent of telling the diabetic to just have normal blood sugar levels. They may want to, but they can't do it alone. They need some sort of treatment.
A recent article in the Atlantic blasts Alcoholics Anonymous and other abstinence-based 12-step programs. Neither an alcoholic nor a teetotaler, I speak with zero authority on the matter, but here's what I know. I have had way too many people close to me struggle with addiction. Everyone I love who has been able to get sober and survive this disease has done it with A.A or N.A.. The one person I know who couldn't "get with the program" didn't survive. So, I believe in the power of A.A. If you want to read the afore-mentioned article, Google it. Here is an article that I prefer instead, and here is help: www.aa.org.
This burden of grief and the guilt of not being the friend to Rob that he (and everyone else) thought I was has been overwhelming at times. Still, it has given me something to do; to be busy, to make sure that everyone who loved him is notified and has someone to cry with and someone to tell stories to. By the second day, something kind of cool started to happen: I started to remember Rob. Like, really remember the friend who I haven't seen more than a glimmer of for the better part of a decade. For the longest time, talking to Rob meant bracing myself to deal with his sickness. Sick Rob had started replacing my memories of the wonderful man I lived with for five years. Now that sick Rob is gone, I can finally start mourning and remembering the vivacious young Rob I knew.
The first things that I remembered were Rob's tastes. He was an amazing cook but he did have a few very particular preferences. First, he hated pickles. Well, he might not have hated them, but he thought that if he always said "no pickle" at a fast food joint, it would guarantee a fresh sandwich. (I told him they probably just picked the pickles off with their teeth.) Second, he loved loads of black pepper in everything, especially his macaroni and cheese. Third, he would always slather Miracle Whip on the outside of his grilled cheese sandwich. Yep, Miracle Whip. Despite that Miracle Whip business, he really was a great cook.
Last thought as it's in my head. I am so immensely grateful to my parents for maintaining my friendship with Rob. To all the people who, like me, regret not answering that last phone call or returning that last text, know that in the week or so before Rob passed, my mom and aunt brought him lemon cookies and my parents went to the courthouse hoping to see him get married. He had lemon cookies and love and I know that made him smile.
3/23/2015
Here are some of my Rob treasures.
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| Pilfered Planter |
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| Eclectic Potpourri |
4/9/2015
I just returned from Boise, where we held a sort of memorial for Rob at my parents' house. It was really nice to have so many people who love him in one place. I am working on a much longer post about the memorial and Rob, but I wanted to share the photos that were gathered before I forget. Facebook tells me that this album can be viewed by anyone who has the link, even if they aren't on Facebook. If it doesn't work, don't blame me - blame Mark Zuckerberg.
Our Friend Rob - Photo Album
4/11/2015
For the first time since that first blurry, teary week, I just found myself face-down on my bed, wailing that disgusting snotty hiccuping sob that none of us will admit to doing since we were kids. If you've followed my Confessions blog since the beginning (or if you know me at all), you know that I don't like to express, or even feel, negative emotions like sadness or anger. In the past couple years, though, I have learned that every now and then, Pollyanna has to be shut down. It is okay to live with a raw emotion sometimes. So here it is: I'm having a hard time. I feel like I've been carrying around this gigantic exposed nerve of sadness that has been coming in waves for the past few weeks; a sudden white hot geyser of grief welling up and trying to erupt until I suppress it with a joke or a funny memory or something shiny...anything to distract it. Now that there is nothing left to plan, no one left to notify or comfort, the only thing left for me to do is fiddle with this raw nerve, like when the anesthesia starts to wear off and you start messing with the abyss where your wisdom teeth once were, just to see how long you can tolerate this new uncomfortable sensation. My abyss is filled with thoughts of how much I love and miss my friend Rob. I know this is common when people are grieving, but I didn't realize how integral Rob still was in my life until he was gone. It's astonishing how often I catch myself thinking "I have to show that to Rob" or "I can't wait to tell Rob about..." only to remind myself that I can't show him or tell him anything anymore.
One of our friends brought a totem for Rob's memorial so on Monday we walked down to the Boise River and had a little ceremony. For the first time since he passed, I was faced with trying to formulate a final goodbye to him and I had no idea what to say. I mumbled something about thanking him for being my friend, cursed him for making me cry, and suddenly felt this incredible loneliness knowing that I will never see him again.
It's hard to describe my relationship with Rob for people who didn't know us together. He was like my brother, but different...more intimate. We were best friends and roommates, but it was much deeper than that. One friend wrote me: "Rob always talked about life with you as an ideal place to be, that you two would be forever room mates and that was his bliss. You were more than a friend to Rob -you were his soul mate". I don't know if it's possible for a straight woman and a gay man to be soul mates, but this feels like the right description and it comforts me, so I'm keeping it.
We had been friends since junior high school, but our real relationship started a few years later, in Olympia and Seattle. In fact, I think it started on the second day that I lived in Olympia, the autumn after my senior year of high school. I was driving around town, looking for work, when I saw Rob and Pops walking on 4th Street. I didn't even know they were living in Olympia, but it was as though they were supposed to be there for me at that exact moment. I had just rented my very first apartment at the Villa Granada (the projects of Tumwater, which is the projects of Olympia) for myself and my asshole boyfriend, who would be moving up from Boise in a couple weeks. Rob and Pops were living downtown Olympia in a building affectionately known as "the Heroin Hotel". I never saw heroin there, but I think the statute of limitations from 1992 has probably run out so I can tell you that their apartment manager, Dave, was also our first pot dealer in Washington. I guess that we spent just about every moment together in those first couple weeks and that's where our bond was really formed. Random fact: I just remembered that Rob and Pops actually shared the same studio apartment where James Fogle lived while writing (and, I think, living) the book that eventually became the movie Drugstore Cowboy.
My mom recalls how Rob and I once concocted what we thought was a brilliant plan for the future. When my brother was planning his first marriage, Rob and I decided we needed new dishes. We calculated that we had already lived together long enough to be common-law spouses, and that the only benefits we were missing from being legally married were the gifts from a wedding registry. So I called my mom and told her that Rob and I were going to get married. She said no. Rob took the phone from me and accused my mother: "It's because I'm gay, isn't it?" My mother responded, "Yes, it's because you're gay. It would never work." Somehow, we were unable to convince her that's exactly why it would work. We could continue to have our own love interests, there would be no suspicions about cheating, we already knew we lived together well, and we could have used a turkey baster to give my mama beautiful olive-skinned grandchildren. It was a perfect plan. Alas, we are not tenacious people, so we let it go when Mom threw out the first road block.
One day, we were playing the porn name game, where you are supposed to generate your porn star name using the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on. You know, in case you ever need to escape from reality to the world of adult video and the only thing that might hold you back is a good porn name. It's best to be prepared for any situation. So anyway, we're trying to generate our porn star names and it is not going well for us. I don't remember what his was, but mine was something like Spots County Road 63. Obviously not a money maker. We decided to scrap the game and choose our own names. Rob chose Bobby Montana for himself, and I loved it. I still call him Bobby Montana and I just realized this might be the first time I've ever explained why. Incidentally, the porn name I chose for myself came from a little auto repair shop right off the Lake City Way exit from I-5. Can you spot it in the picture?
Rob was quick to judge people and rarely ever wrong. If he judged that you were worth befriending, you didn't really have a choice in the matter. You could try to fight it, but he would eventually wear you down and insinuate himself into your life. If he didn't like a dude I brought around on the first meeting, there wasn't really much hope for the poor guy. I ditched more than a couple boyfriends who couldn't quite accept the fact that dating me also meant dating Rob, and that there was absolutely no room in our relationship for some dude to come in and act jealous. In fact, the only time Rob and I ever fooled around was when my asshole boyfriend was being an asshole and kept accusing us of sleeping together. Once, after the asshole stormed out in the middle of the night, screaming down Capitol Blvd that I was a whore, Rob and I figured that it wasn't fair that we kept getting in trouble for something we had never done. So we made out, meaning the closest we ever got to sex was really just spite. In a weird way, that might actually explain our life together. Everything was a thinly-veiled joke with a punchline that only we understood.
This feels like enough for now. The nerve is starting to scab over and the tears are subsiding, so I'm signing off. I'll bring peanuts and ice cream next time, Bobby Montana.
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