This isn’t really the kind of post I imagined writing for my blog, and maybe it’s not something anybody really wants to read, so if anybody does see this, it’s probably a once in a lifetime kind of post for me, but it’s something I needed to put out there. Writing my life is what I do, though I usually hide it in stories and characters. Today, no hiding. There is probably very little that should be kept in the dark anyway.
A week ago I lost my uncle, Chris. We were raised together. Chris was only four years older than I am, and he killed himself on a beautiful sunny day.
My understanding of this act of his floats somewhere with my memories in an amorphous, gray drizzle. I remember the sweetest of times—drifting, delicate, fragile memories—as fragile as life. I remember a day after Christmas years ago. Chris and I were heading into the city (San Francisco), sixties and seventies “oldies but goodies” on the radio of a brilliant yellow Toyota (his first car). We listened to the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, and Led Zeppelin on our way to visit our friends. They lived on Twin Peaks with a gorgeous view of the city. Since then, one of those friends has died of AIDS, and one has disappeared into the world. I wish them both happiness wherever they are.
I remember that it rained that day and was gray and sweet and intimate in their warm little apartment. We were so young. Mid teens to mid twenties.
I remember other foggy days in Carmel and Monterey. We’d drive down from Santa Cruz where Chris lived then. Windy, gray, salty, wonderful trips.
In Santa Cruz he lived in a little cottage with his then girlfriend, later wife. The floor was cement, covered in a thin carpet. The place smelled of mildew and the rabbits that lived out the kitchen window. I remember the slow swirl of flies in the little living room, the smell of animals and slightly salty air.
He used to come pick me up from school carrying a bottle of something illicit in a paper bag. He adored his dogs, and when they died, his cats. He liked rock hunting and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mysteries. He was orphaned, emotionally adrift, then married and settled. I based a character in one of the first books I ever wrote on Chris, on the simple, honest and kind way he lived his life.
But he wasn’t kind in the end—I guess people aren’t when they’re in pain. He walked away from the cats and the wife he loved on a beautiful sunny day.
Was he suffering from depression? Maybe. It’s a guess. This is something I know about. This is something my family knows about. We suffer from depression and addictions. We have our demons.
But the thing I keep thinking about is that day. The beauty of it. How sad to forget that the only beauty anybody ever promised us is here in this one moment in time. Chris followed his pain into the dark, and I can only guess that he never saw the sun or heard the singing of the birds on that beautiful day.
All I can do now is say peace to you, Chris, and hope that you are surrounded by light and love and the sweetest of songs forever.
I will miss you.
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