Pete Died

I'm at work. Excited because Guy is on his way back from an emergency business trip to China. My mother-in-law has been staying with me to help with Rx. It's been fun.

The phone rings. I pick up.

"Hello?" I hear Guy and a weird sound, I don't know what it is, but it isn't "Hi."
"What?"
"PETE DIED!"
The words hit like a bullet, but like I'm hearing it through a tunnel. Like a dream. Like a nightmare, like a red hot iron. It's impossible that I'm hearing these words. His voice, thin, cracking, from the brink. Before I can think, I tell him, "I'll call you right back."

I'm swift. I have to be. I'm about to fall apart in such a way that cannot be public at all. My body is ripping in half, my brain is spilling out, it would be...inappropriate in cube-land, here in corporate world, it would be messy, this is private. I walk straight to a conference room and close the door. I dial Guy.

"What HAPPENED???"

Some people think it's crazy to be surprised by someone who abused drugs to die from drugs. But it surprises me completely. No, you don't think your friends are gonna die. No, you don't expect a hole to be ripped open in the sky, in the fabric, in space-time. No, because they are there, always there. Their voice is in your voicemail, their text is fresh, still sitting there. No, no matter what has happened, happens every day, they won't just disappear.

I thought he would recover from his addiction, and not only that, but grow to be the kind of man other displaced souls gravitate towards for compassion. I saw him being a leader, a quiet one. I saw him finding love again. I saw him maybe even becoming a dad at the age of 50. I saw him soft and lovely and open for the rest of my years. Someone to adore always.

I didn't see this.

I am so lucky to have wonderful friends, and so many of them that are very dear. Then there are those friends who touch your heart deeply, those that live right on the edge of your consciousness all the time, familiar like a cell.

He was that.

I drove to the airport to pick up Guy that afternoon. When I got to the top level of the parking structure, I turned the car off and bawled. I took a picture of my face after a break in the bawling to pay respect to him, to show the pain lying in the lines of my face, swelling in the pits of my scars. I took it to remember.

And then I called his number before they turned it off. I left a message, I cried, I cried to him, to his voicemail. That transmission would be my last to his number. Before the wires got cut, when maybe a thin line of energy was still trailing out of this world...

"Pete, I love you, why did you go? Why did you GO?!"