I imagine people wonder why I didn't go. It sounds uniquely selfish to not attend your friend's funeral. And, in that way that's so difficult to explain in a sentence, my not going was the best thing I could do. I was in the city, yes, but it was probably smartest of me not to be there. I don't want anyone to think I don't care, that I don't miss him, that it didn't mean anything. It means too much, the issues are much weightier than I imagined, and, with something like this, I couldn't let myself get inside a thrashing, sinking ship.
What does someone do in this situation? I find myself asking questions like that a lot. I always have to step back, breathe, and look at it objectively. Objectivity is almost impossible within my caricature of ideals. Objectivity seems like something I have to do in reaching outside myself, grappling at an external reality. Depending on your experiences, I find myself trying to be someone else. I put temporary white picket fences around my mind, ignore things I know, and act like what I'm projecting to be: Let's smile, say it's okay, and maybe play a memorial concert filled with Traumerei and Elegies.
Is that what the cellist would do?
But it seems like that's only half of me. I had painted for myself an image, tough and confident, and no matter how phony it all was to me, it was real for him. He trusted me, followed me, became a lot like me -- but somehow he tripped and entangled himself in this gang, a group of fast-acting toughs that became bigger than their name itself. You spend your formative years trying to craft yourself into something you think people respect -- a fantasy of sorts -- and then you grow up: Most people laugh it off, regard it as a phase, and look at it as a growing experience.
That's easy enough to do on most days. But when your friend, the one who seemed as if he'd die for you, dies himself of fatal gunshot wounds, it doesn't seem quite like high school immaturity anymore, where one's grasp on rage was inchoate and minor. With everything silhouetted by his death, the idiocy has been somehow professionalized.
I feel like the magician in the Le Guin's "Wizard of Earthsea". The sorcerer wanted to be a carefree bear romping in the woods so much that he would transform himself into that feral state for hours. The rush, wild and menacing, gripped him so much he visited this state more frequently, for longer periods of time. Eventually, he disappeared into that form. Having his wits slowly dulled by unchecked savageness, he found no way to transform back to his human state. It's as if, with the last amount of magic, he pushed himself from the dock with no oars to return.
So it seems as though we as a group spent so much time inventing these characters that, if you believe it long enough, it weaves around you an inescapable mesh. You feel as though you have a duty somewhere within yourself to honour what was once so sacred between everyone. For that reason I can't say goodbye. To go back and shake hands with that past, now a world much more sardonic and grown-up. I said goodbye so long ago, when I saw how twisted our miniature and Byronic gangland could be.
Sometimes, when you lie on the floor, your tears well up in your ears. The edges of the world soften and dim; you can't hear; it's peaceful. You feel far away from reality and you can float in gentle nothingness. And sometimes that's enough reason to not say goodbye.
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