To my Friend, One Month After his Death

It seems like it’s been longer than a month, and yet it also seems like yesterday was the last time you texted me.  But no, January 7th was the last time and January 8th, around 2:30 in the morning you left this world.

Though we were just friends and in fact hadn’t even known each other all that long, I wonder if you know what you meant to me.  You were the realest dude I ever met, and when you told me once that I was one of the realest chicks… well that meant more to me than a thousand men calling me beautiful and a hundred more calling me smart. 

I loved talking to you because although we came from very different backgrounds (you grew up in the hood and saw crack being smoked at a young age, while I was in the suburbs where alcoholism was my biggest concern) we had a lot in common.  I miss our serious conversations about books and life and I miss the crazy conspiracy theories you used to get me hip to… “Merry Christmas, what do you want Satan, I mean Santa to bring you?  Sorry, I was just watching this documentary about how Santa is Satan…”  Who’s gonna inform me of things of this nature now?  Remember how we used to talk shit about how we were gonna ‘run away’ from home?  I miss that and I wish we would have gone.  I wish I would have told you even more about my past because you were the only person who didn’t treat me differently at all once you knew the dirt.  You made me laugh… you made me smarter… you listened while I talked (a lot) about my dreams, but at the same time you made me see that there’s more to life than chasing all these crazy goals.  I’ve always felt like I’m more than the things I’ve done and the things that have been done to me because of my ambition… but I believe you saw there was more to me simply because I was me.  I just hope you know that I saw you as more than the world did, too.

And baby this world did you so bad.  Another young black man murdered.  So many people asked me if it was over dope.  No, it wasn’t over dope or gangs or ANYTHING at all… but if it had been, would that make it any less sad?  Not to me.

My blanket would still be black with mascara.  I still would have been breaking down randomly on the bus those first two weeks.  This pain… it’s a cliché, but there really are no words for it.  I know that in math there are some amounts so large they can only be quantified in relation to some smaller number, written with all kinds of crazy exclamation points and exponents and whatnot.  Well the only way I can describe losing you is in relation to the things I used to think were hard.

What does it feel like to hear your friend died on the sidewalk with three bullets in his back at barely 26?

It’s many times harder than getting abused, getting cheated on, getting robbed and left to wonder how you’re gonna come up with your rent money.  Everything up until now seems so fixable.  Just save for a plane ticket, Jo, and you can laugh again, meet new people and you will trust again, you will make that money back, things will change, and this despair you feel, crying at a bus stop in Vegas in 2009, won’t last.  But there’s no way to bring someone back, make bullets retrace their path and walk backwards through time just a few days, thinking over and over ‘it would have been so easy to save him had I known…’  I can’t fix this now.  Gone is the one thing that someone can be forever.  Gone… no more chances… left with nothing but memories… such a hard concept for a girl who trained herself to get through hard times by thinking only of the future, and never quite got around to deciding whether she believed in God or heaven.

I’ve had relatives die but nothing that hit me quite like your death.  Even just a few weeks later, the what-if’s, what-now’s, and why’s that screamed and screamed and barely let me eat or fall asleep have quieted, turned into a low, slow song sung by a chorus of different voices: increased caution because, damn, motherfuckers really getting killed out here, and a decreased fear of death, because now I don’t just got friends in Brooklyn, Cali, and the hood, I’ve got a friend in heaven, so why should I be afraid to go to any of those places?  I’m madder than I’ve ever been and simultaneously calm, having decided that there is a heaven, there must be.  And even as I realize there’s much more to life than this grind (“the mansions and Jacuzzis and the fucking flying cars” …and if not the flying cars then at least a damn Avalanche on 30’s!) I’m more motivated than I’ve ever been. 

I want you to look down on me and be proud… and I want you to laugh at my ass from time to time, too, I thought that when you had me crying into a damn used dryer sheet because I do seem to run out of tissue at the most inconvenient times.  You aren’t even here and I’m still seeking your attention… still wanting your advice… still eager to rep you despite the fact that I was not your girl (even though you told me I would ALWAYS be your “gurl.”)  Trust and believe I am getting that tattoo.  And no, it’s not to ensure I remember you.  How could I forget you if I tried?

I will think of you every time I read any of the books we talked about and when (God willing) I see my own in print… damn I wish you could have read it.  I’ll think of you every time I’m faced with a tough decision.  I’ll think of you every time I wish I had a thug who really cared around to protect me… after all, you were the only person who told me you woulda beat “that dude’s” ass had you been around back then…  I will thank you every time I remember that nothing in this world determines my value.  Every November 27th and January 8th I will remember you… no matter how many years I have left.

I comfort myself by thinking of how we’re gonna have to catch up once I cross those gates.  Maybe I will be in my twenties with unrealized potential and no children, just like you.  Or maybe I’ll be a little older… maybe I will have met some more intelligent, real-ass dudes and gained some more knowledge from them… it still won’t change how much you meant to me…

Yet even as I write this I realize I’m scared to seek new confidantes and protectors… scared of letting someone else define me, even in good ways, wishing almost that in a world where everything changes so fast, I might remain mummified by loss, hold on to the girl who knew you and lost you forever, wear that loss forever as a beautiful scar.

When my good friend lost her ex to a gunshot two years ago, she thought about getting his name tatted but was glad she didn’t after she went to the funeral and found out about the lies he’d been telling her and the other women she didn’t know existed.  Personally, though, I just feel like what I meant to you no longer matters, it’s what you meant to me that always will… even if I live to be a seventy-five-year-old tatted up grandmother (and if I do, please feel free to laugh)

And maybe that is the real reason I want this tattoo.  It’s not to ensure I remember you.  It’s to illustrate my hope that no matter how life changes me, no matter how good or bad it treats me, we will still be able to laugh, talk shit, discuss our lessons, and catch up once it’s all said and done.  It’s my way of saying that though for you I hope the next life is beautiful, full of knowledge, and above all else, real, as you enjoy it please don’t forget about me.

With love and gratitude for:

Antonio Williams

11.27.85 – 1.8.12

See You Soon.