I hope you found some type of peace. Some frame of reference that allows your smile to overshadow the storms in your head.
You found the worst possible way to make me go back on my word, you know.
I've read a few things that people have written, since you decided to throw one last mystery at the world. They make me smile oddly. I don't think any of them knew you at all. Except in that artificial way that you post things over the web. Each word, a sad caricature of your syntax. A counterfeit of you, trying so hard to blot out the real person underneath. But, how can you blame them? You only gave most of the world a reflection of thier own shadows, except in your music.
A tiny, still part of me still loves you. That part became a giant over this past week, as I processed the news that came barreling at me at lightspeeds from Ada to Denver. Do you have any idea how hard it is to take 67,000 lbs from Aurora to Ft Worth when you can't stop crying? Everything suddenly had a significance to you, no matter how topsy-turvey the connection.
I keep wondering how your dad must feel, no one should have to bury that much family, in so short a time.
Have I missed you? I suppose so, every now and then something comes up and I wonder how you would react to it. I spent most of the first year since we parted ways trying not to think of you at all. Sometimes it even worked. When it didn't everything would come together in my head, like asteroids colliding, and make me angry at the situation all over again.
Did I ever forgive you? Of course I did. You showed me a side of both of us that I didn't believe possible. It may have been terrible, but it was always there. I wish I had recognzed what you were trying to do earlier. I've never been good with that sort of thing. Even if I suspect, I want to hear it. Even then, after you finally spoke, I found it hard to believe. Suspicious minds and all that. There are certain things that I will always keep to myself. I may hint in my writing from time to time, but the busybodies don't need to know everything, do they? Some things will always remain just between us.
I hope that you don't actually haunt me very long, to tell the truth. I don't mind for a little while, and I enjoy carryeing your ghost around just a little bit, but at some point, I have to let your shade go. That's all I'm really holding onto after all, isn't it?
Why did you have to prove me right? Things were going so well for both of us, and now your universe has imploded, taking me into a maelstrom of mixed-up emotions.
The night "See you on the other side" went literal, I was in a hotel room in Arizona, just over the New Mexico border. Starting a vacation that I thought was going to be a wonderful last look at my childhood. I thought of you often, through Hitchcock jokes and forests. I think I just found it crappy that there was no one to share the experience with. I feel a little guilty about all this, because while I was having a blast, you were repainting your insides. I keep thinking of the proximity, and realizing that there is nothing in the world I could have done, but feeling shitty for it anyway.
I've been listening to you today. You've been a prolific little shit over the last two years. I am saddened by what you could've become, had you just run a little longer. I would have been proud of you, had I known all the work you had done. That's all irrelevant now though, isn't it?
All the lies and exaggerations, all the tall tales and apocrypha of you. All gone. You were completely full of shit, and I loved you anyway. I am sorry that you died.
It occurs to me that this isn't good enough. Certainly not FUCKING EPIC enough to be a proper tribute or goodbye. I know that you would want me to write you through the stages of the afterworld that every mind may or may not conjure. To walk with you through the center of the sun as you make your way to the nearest nebula. Just so we can make fun of the fact that even heavenly bodies get gasous. The only problem, little raven, is that your flight has taken me completely out of my head. I have not the art to justify your life, or your death. They leave me, as always, nothing but confused.
~M
p.s. Jessie; now is not the fucking time. I don't know if there ever will be one.
