"S is dead."
"...what?! OUR S?"
"YES, OUR S." The frustration in his voice at such a silly question was undeniable.
"What?! How?!" I'm sobbing at this point.
"He hung himself in his trailer."
I cried the whole way home and then continued to sob in the house. I called my dad, woke him up and sobbed to him about it. He was incredulous (probably mostly to appease me in my hysterics) because I was so young to have a friend commit suicide. What could possibly make someone so young want to end their life? It was unbelievable.
S wasn't buried here in America. His body was shipped to Bosnia, where his family is, and buried there. Several months after his death, his girlfriend invited us over. His family had mailed her the DVD of his funeral and burial. I packed my purse tight with tissues and we drove over and watched it. To see his body, his face in that box, a face that was so familiar to me and always full of life, lifeless...and then to see them lower his body into that hole in the ground...my heart physically hurt. It felt as if something was trying to wrench it from my chest. They threw the dirt over his coffin and, his girlfriend, who was pregnant at the time, nonchalantly says, "Welp, he's gone." It angered me that she was so cool about it, but I knew that she was struggling in a very different way than we were. She'd lost the love of her life, her best friend, the father of her unborn baby. Perhaps reacting coolly was the only way she knew how to deal with that level of grief.
How do you deal with something so tragic? I don't know. I went through years of tears and guilt, wondering why he didn't tell me what was going on. I knew things were bad and that he was having a hard time, but I had no idea it was so bad. I should have seen the signs. Well, I saw the signs, I just ignored them because I was mad at him. He was depressed and struggling with his failing business, and he began to withdraw from everyone. We used to see him all the time, several times a week. Suddenly, we would go months without seeing him. We thought that he was getting an attitude; we helped him build his own business and when things took off, he didn't feel he needed the little people anymore. That wasn't the case at all. He stopped by one day, after months of not seeing him, after my first cancer treatments were over and my hair had started to grow back. I remember it so clearly. He sat at the bottom of our stairs and I was sitting on the couch. He asked what happened to all my hair. I kind of smirked, thinking, "oh, NOW you're gonna ask, after everything's over and you missed everything?" and told him that I was sick. He said something like "noooo" or "no way" to indicate that he thought I was joking. My response was, "Don't believe me. I don't care." But, even in my anger, I could tell something was wrong with him. He wasn't himself. He wasn't smiling, wasn't joking. His eyes were dark. Why didn't I see that he needed help? Why didn't I, someone who's struggled with depression for my entire life, recognize pain when I saw it? I saw the signs and ignored them because of my own selfishness. Selfishness, by the way, that was completely unfounded. So I just let him go. I'm not sure we ever saw him again after that.
He came to me in a dream shortly after his death. I know it was him because when I woke up, it felt like he was still alive. Reality hitting was terrible, but I will forever treasure that dream. It was so vivid. The only part of the dream I remember is the one he's in. My car was parked in the garage with the garage door shut. He walked into the garage using the side door and I walked towards him. He was in his typical jeans, white sneakers, tan Carhartt jacket and white baseball cap. With these heartbreaking tears of sadness and apology in his eyes, he hugged me. He didn't say a word. But I knew he was hugging me and crying because he was sorry for what he had done and the pain he had caused. I could feel it.
I know why he did it. The 'why' doesn't really matter anymore. I just can't stop blaming myself for not seeing the obvious signs that I'm so familiar with and stepping in. I would have done anything to save his life. Man, I miss that little shit.
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