About Three Times

About three times today I made a mental note to email Matt about something that was happening. And so, about three times today I had to slow my mental pace. Three times today I remembered what it felt like to let the news of his death sink in. Three times I felt isolated. Three times I had to readjust.

I didn’t realize until he was gone just how much I relied on Matt. He’s definitely high on my list of people I talk about. “You know such interesting people,” my mom told me once. I sure do. What’s the point in knowing boring people? And Matt was interesting.

If you want to know who impacts you, move away. Move to a new city and meet new people. And then listen to who you talk about to your new friends. You might think your ex-boyfriend was important, but it could be the administrative assistant at your old job who you talk about the most. Maybe you were in the same classes with a good friend all through grad school, but it could be the once a week coffee-break partner who’s advice you repeat.

Matt was like that for me. He wasn’t a fully integrated part of my circle of friends in Boston - how could he be? He spent half of each year living on a tropical beach counting turtle eggs or lecturing about blue footed boobies - but through long distance communication he became important. His take on my life was virtually as an outsider. Most of the people I whined about he’d only met once, if at all. He was seemingly impartial, and it was easy to be honest with him about things that mattered. And he became someone I repeated.

Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s research categorizes grief into 5 stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. The more recent work of John Bowlby puts grief into 4 categories: Shock and Numbness, Yearning and Searching, Disorganization and Despair, and Reorganization. It sort of pisses me off that the Bowlby research doesn’t include a stronger spot for Anger. It is the closest descriptor for what I feel. Somedays I feel like I have moved on to Acceptance, but only in terms of accepting my anger. I accepted that Matt is dead shortly after hearing the news. But that’s when the anger intensified.

It was pointed out to me that a gay man my age 20 years ago would have witnessed the death of nearly half his friends. I should be content that I’ve been spared that experience. I suppose.

I suppose that each time today I felt the urge to contact him I should count as a blessing that at one time it was a possibility.

Tonight I’m wondering what Matt would think of the hard time I’m having with his death. I’m wondering why I found him easy to confide in. I’m wondering if at the time I even knew what a good friend he was. I wonder if he realized how important he was. I hope I returned the favor.