I sank down to my knees, into the dirt and grass mixture, staring down at my hands. “Hey, man,” I said. My voice cracked. “It’s been awhile since I’ve come to see you, huh?” I sighed outward through my nose. Coming here always gave me the worst feelings, all tied in with the worst memories. I glanced up at the piece of stone in front of me. Just seeing the name etched into it still made me wince. It still gave me the most despairing feeling I’d ever known. Every single time I saw it I felt that lump in my throat and tears stinging in my eyes. It was ridiculous how even after all this time, almost a year, it still gave me the worst feeling. It was unbearable.
“I-I..,” My voice trailed off as memories started to flash through my mind. The first one to play happened to be the first time I’d ever come to visit him;
Tears were streaming down my face. I hit the ground in front of the gravestone, hard. I was sobbing loudly, and thankfully there weren’t many people around to notice my scene. I felt miserable and helpless, drowning in depression. I couldn’t say anything, I was too busy trying to catch my breath and calm down. I wasn’t fully able to grasp in my mind that this was actually happening. I was finally able to calm my breathing down before I needed to pull out my inhaler. Although my tears came to a halt, all those painful emotions stayed, seeming to settle into my chest as if to show me all this would be permanent.
Everything that had happened in the past few days replayed through my mind as I kneeled there. The worst phone call of my life; the hospital had called saying that he had been in a terrible car accident with fatal head injuries. The news hit me suddenly and shock and denial plowed into me. As soon as the other line disconnected the phone slipped from my fingers hitting the floor loudly. My first instinct was to go visit him. He was still alive. But the medics made it pretty clear he wouldn’t be for much longer.
As I pulled up into the nearly full parking lot, the shock had started to settle in. I fled from my car and to the building, trying to keep my emotions under control. I burst into the room I was told belonged temporarily to him. He was unconscious upon the bed, hooked up to different machines I didn’t pay much attention to. The sight of him like this almost made me loose it. But I managed to control myself, despite my trembling hands. He looked so lifeless and broken. It hurt me somewhere deep inside.
When it was time for me to leave the hospital, as I was driving home anger swept through me. Thankfully, I was able to pull into the garage before anything got out of hand. As I stepped out of my car, I slammed the door behind me. I stormed into my house, rage still freshly coursing through my veins. All he had being doing was going to the store to pick up a few things and he managed to ruin everything. I wanted to blame someone for this so naturally I tried to pin it on him. Maybe if he had been safer and more careful he wouldn’t have gotten hit, he’d probably have been there next to me playing video games and laughing at our own stupid jokes.
Eventually my anger subsided and I found myself sprawled out across the living room floor. My ears were ringing from the silence, my head was pounding, and an empty feeling had settled in and filled my chest. I was breathing lightly and I had figured this was the part where I started sobbing my eyes out. But instead I laid there feeling an emptiness singed at the edges with depression.
I hadn’t gone to visit him again after that. It was selfish, but I couldn’t bear to see his half-dead, broken body resting on the hospital cot. Just thinking about it, and knowing it was reality, was enough to give me that horrible feeling. I didn’t want to see him like that ever again. I’d lost track of how many days went by, but I knew it wasn’t very many. Soon enough I got another call from the same hospital. This time the awful news they’d delivered was even worse than the last, although I knew it was coming. He was gone. I ended up throwing my phone at the wall, the screen cracking to bits.
I had attended his funeral. It was the hardest time I ever had holding back my tears in public. Most of his other friends and family members were there as well, even a few he’d never introduced to me before. I refused to give any word or speech, not because I didn’t want to, but because anything I might’ve said would have had me choking up, and I was already having a hard enough time controlling myself. It was another selfish thing, and I’m sure if it were my funeral he was at he would have acted differently, but it wasn’t. As soon as I arrived back at my home I let everything out. Any bit of anger, sadness, shock or denial came out with my tears and yells, even though the guilt and depression stayed behind. I was sure the neighbors hated me even more after that fit.
Again, I’d stopped keeping track of time at that point, but around a week later I took my first visit to him. I was a wreck, both mentally and physically, but I went anyway. I wasn’t able to control myself there, but no one was around anyway. When I got home it was even worse. I slammed the front door, crying and gasping for breath. I ripped my jacket off tossing it aside, along with my keys. I tried to keep my sobs quieter, so the neighbors wouldn’t come over and tell me to shut up. I ended up falling into a dreamless sleep, after giving up to try and find the answers to the impossible questions I asked myself.
I started to visit him more and more, until it became a daily routine. Even though the graveyard gave me chills and seeing his stone implanted in the ground caused me to tear up, it almost gave my life a meaning again. It was dark and twisted in a way, but I still got to see him everyday. I almost started to see him more than I ever did when he was still alive. And we’d been roommates for almost five years, and friends for way longer.
After awhile I stopped going less and less. It wasn’t that I’d stopped missing him, or even started to recover from his sudden death, it just got harder to control myself. Things weren’t getting any better, but worse. Visiting him triggered all those memories and feelings, but sitting alone back home did the same. I usually ended up sleeping as much as possible, it gave me a little break from all the stress and depression. The longest period I’d gone without giving him a visit was about a week, I could tell even though I’d lost my sense of time. So I got back into my car and drove. As soon as I threw myself onto the ground, seeing the stone with his name carved into it gave me a small feeling of relief, even though my throat tightened and tears threatened to spill from my eyes.
“I’ve missed you,” I said. All I wanted to do at that moment was to share some sort of reassuring embrace with him. But I couldn’t. I choked out another sob. “Really, dude. I’ve missed you a lot.”
I seemed to say that every time I came here.
I bit at my trembling lip. “Sorry I haven’t come in awhile,” I sighed miserably, “I just… needed some time to think, I guess.”
I felt as if no matter how many excuses and lies I made up about it, he would still know the real reason. After all he did know me better than anyone else, dead or alive. That was cheesy, I thought. I tried to crack a smile at my little joke, but I probably ended up looking stupid and it quickly turned into another frown. I sighed again. I sat there awhile, lightly tapping my fingers against my leg. The sky was still cloudy, gray and depressing. Or maybe it wasn’t. I couldn’t really tell anymore.
I felt the need saying something, anything, but words seemed to have abandoned me. I exhaled again. If I hadn’t come here a million times before, I would’ve said that the sadness and depression almost started to fizzle and leave. But I knew it was just a side effect of coming to see him. It was relaxing almost, along with also awful and sick how it effected me like this, like some sort of guilty pleasure. I guessed this feeling had come from being close friends with him and all, considering he had always been there for me whenever I needed someone. It sounded stupid and cliché in my thoughts or out loud, but it was mostly true.
“It sucks man,” I said, after some thought. “Y’know living without you. It really sucks.” I paused again, thinking, before continuing, “I never really wanted to know what it was like to live without a best-friend… Trust me, dude, it really freaking sucks.”
I stood up, looking down at the gravestone. An enormous wave of sadness washed over me, almost drowning me again. Images from the first time I’d ever come here, ever stood in front of his grave, showed before my eyes. I blinked away the vision, focusing back down on the stone in front of me. Suddenly, I felt angry again. It was pointless, undirected anger towards everyone, mostly him. It was the same as it had been before, I was trying blame him for all this, for dying. It was all his fault because he wasn’t more careful, it was all his fault for leaving in the first place. It was all his fault he got hit by that stupid car. It was his fault he died and left me to hate and despair everything about the way things turned out.
“You know what else sucks?” I asked, slowly falling back down to my knees. I paused, although I knew no one would answer. “You do. If you hadn’t..,” My voice faltered as I realized I was trying to pick a fight with someone who wasn’t even alive anymore. I almost apologized, before it almost suddenly seemed to dawn on me. He wasn’t even alive anymore. I felt stupid.
Why had I still cared at this point? I couldn’t do anything about it, and coming to visit him daily and drowning in sorrow about his death wasn’t helping anything. I needed to just move on and continue with my life. I needed to just get any bit of sadness or remorse or self-pity out of me. I could find a new best-friend right? All those years that we’d hung out and been friends didn’t matter anymore. All the times we had been there for each other, meant nothing anymore. All the memories we shared were pointless to remember and sulk in now. I couldn’t do anything about the way things turned out to be. I just needed to get him and all these feelings out of my mind. I just needed to forget. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just couldn’t.
I stood up and left without saying anything else.