obsequie

if i stumble through this i'm sorry.

i was seventeen when po died. i had spent a good amount of time with him especially when i was younger. we'd lost contact of late. not that we couldn't contact each other but just that we didn't. we never had beef or disagreements, we just sort of stopped talking.

i found out two weeks after it happened. i'd been sleeping less well adjusting to a new world, a new bed. i heard it from a freind who heard it from a friend. its been years and i still almost want to believe it's a rumour. i know it's not though.

there's something about a person who dies as a result beyond their cause. i've known people in numbers who've committed suicide, people lost to drug overdoses and still more who are braindead or otherwise empty eyed from their drug use, but po died as a result of nothing. he just died. cancer. there is nothing in his life he could've done differently, no crowd he could have changed, no talk he could have had with his parents and avoided the whole issue. nothing he could have resolved.

po didn't do drugs anymore. he drank only seldomly. he smoked cigarettes but only sparingly. he was in love with the cast of party of five. he dreamt of being a famous painter. he was good. but there are no more paintings left for po to paint. no more canvases left for him to fill. no more dreams left to be dreamt. there is only a box of bones buried in a cemetary with a thousand other painters writers musicians.

he used to say there was nothing anyone could do to make him stop painting. he was wrong. i used to tell him if he took that attitude about nothing would ever be able to. i was wrong. i was wrong about a lot of things.

i was wrong not to talk to him for so long. i was wrong for everytime we argured. i was wrong for telling him he'd never make it one day when i overheard him saying bad things about me. i was wrong for every saying anything to him but i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you, po. i did love him.

and for that i was not wrong.

i will never be wrong for loving him. i will never be wrong for having seen him smile at me. i will never be wrong for having held him when his girlfriend dumped him. i will never be wrong for having woken in a world that shared oxygen with someone like po. with thousands like him. with the only one of his kind.

po was an orginal, but he wasn't the onyl of his kind. there are millions i don't say i love you to that i should. there are millions i say or think won't make it that i am wrong about. there are millions i share oxygen with everyday that will someday die at the hands of something they have no control over that i don't talk to or acknowledge. there are millions that will go on forever in the memory of the ones that knew them. i never want to be wrong about not telling someone i love them again. i never want to be wrong about not appreciating every moment each and every person spends breathing smiling walking thinking aloud talking to themselves smoking cigarettes. i never want to be wrong about anything that changes the way people feel about themselves. po taught me that. po taught me that we are born with certain blood, blood we can't change. writer blood, painter blood, lawyer blood, accountant blood, and we need each other. we need lawyer blood and writer blood and mobster blood and pastor blood and bus dirver blood and doctor blood and janitor blood. po taught me thateverything is worth a smile. po taught me that nothing compares with feeling the wind blow through your hair. po taught me that the sea models for us our need to let go of anything that controls us and just float just let life take us where it may. that we can use padels and sails but never fret when the sea carries us elsewhere. po taught me to love sunsets. po taught me that even the thorns on a rose are beauitful.

i don't really miss po anymore, but sometimes i'd like to talk to him. when it gets that way i just close my eyes at sunset and let the wind blow through my hair and know that he is with me every moment of my waking hour.

2002-11-11 | 9:39 p.m.
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