Most people would start a node this like this with the phrase,
I'll never forget the day, but not me.
Truth be told, I can barely
remember the day at all. I know it was a Saturday, but I cannot remember if it was sunnny out or if was raining. I have no idea what time it was. All I can really remember was that it was a Saturday.
Marty's mom was supposed to come down from
Rochester with some of my stuff, stuff that I had left at Marty's when I moved. It was strange because she was late, and that was so unlike her. She was the very definition of
meticulously prompt. My mother knew something must be wrong, her
motherly intuition told her so, but she thought maybe Cathie(Marty's mom) had been in a car accident on the way.
We were all sitting in the living room waiting for her to arrive when the
phone rang. My mom picked up the phone, which is a very rare occurence, because even on Saturdays we
screen our calls. I can't remember much of what happened but I can
vaguely remember her saying hello and listing off the people in the room: my mom, my dad and I think two of my four
siblings. The next thing I remember is her handing the phone to me and being told that Marty had killed himself and his mother had found him dead in his apartment that morning.
It seems odd that I can't remember any particular
detail, not one word that was spoken. I remember thinking, well shit, I better start crying 'cause Marty's dead. And I think I sort of
forced myself to shed a few tears but they didn't come
naturally. In fact all the
tears that I would shed over Marty for the next year and a half would be unnatural and forced.
For months I walked through life in a state of
numbness. I couldn't feel sadness, pain, grief or joy. It was the strangest feeling. The only way that I could describe how I felt to anyone was that I felt when Marty died a part of me died, the part that I
loved most. The things that I used to enjoy I no longer enjoyed because it was he who showed me the
joy they could bring and without him it was gone. I thought that I was half a person without him, and the half that was missing had all the good parts.
It has taken me two years of not living to finally understand my
mistake. I was sitting on the
porch today thinking about all the mistakes I have made in the last year or so when I asked Marty to give me the
strength to make it through these tough times. And the
answer that came back to me is,
I have always been here,
I am in you.
And that is when I came to understand what
death means, Marty's in particular.
(See:
I am in you)