My best friend killed himself last Friday by slitting his throat.

  I’d known him since junior high, when I feared him for relentlessly teasing me in English class and around campus for being class nerd, social retard, straight A student.

  He apologized profusely 20 years later when I’d bring it up in jest. He’d become a Mormon, of all damn things! See, in high school, him & another guy & me would get high & drunk & listen to music together.

  So: I knew him in junior high, high school, and sometimes ran into him at the local community college.

  Then in 1999 or so we reconnected, in our early 30’s. Turns out he’d done the Mormon conversion, and also married his life long sweetheart & started having children. 3 boys they had, fine lads who loved their doting dad. 

  He tried to convert me to his faith, for he feared for my soul. He was dead serious, a true man of faith, but not at all obnoxious about it. In fact, he never spoke above a gentle barely audible monotone.

  The stiff manner may have been due to his Swedish ancestry, or the psychiatric drugs he took for his bipolar disorder.

  Either way , he was a mighty moral force in my life, the big brother I always needed, the Father/Brother confessor, the confidante about my own bipolar illness.

  We went to church together. It didn’t stick with me, because I couldn’t give up caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol.  He still loved me. We had long talks about esoteric matters, and also mental health rap between two sufferers.  Nothing like talking to “one of your own”.

I got in a hell of a lot of trouble around 2000, and closed the door on life.  Hid out at my parents’ house and sank into a near suicidal despair.  You know what the guy did, to my horror & discomfort?  Showed up once or twice a week to sit with me and try to talk it through, him assuring me I was a good person who had a future.  I sat mostly mute in catatonic despair, hypnotized by his gentle faith in me.

Years later, we reconnected again. His perfect family life was cracking. It was my turn to counsel him. We went to therapy groups together, and of course his church.  He and I and his boys went out on excursions, and I witnessed a gentle father guiding his  boys on the straight path to righteousness, the real kind.

Then catastrophe struck my fragile hold on life and events spun crazily out of control. I ended up homeless, walking the streets of the town I’d cruised through in middle class splendor and ignorance and protection. All my protection was gone.

I managed to end up in a stable situation. I perch from my room & view like an eagle high above the valley with healing wings. I will fly someday, I know.

A month ago I ran into my friend, whom I’d completely lost touch with for a few years. The bad years. 

“Hey Jim,” he said.  Gentle, open. Standing tall, a beautiful mane of graying hair, a perfect upright man, what the gals would call prime hunk. Towered above my restless squirmy twitchy 5 ft 9, barely 140 lbs.

There he was again, and we , being best friends, fell instantly into our roles. Me the sarcastic naïve foul-mouthed (at times) “genius”-so called, him the honest man of God following the true path.

I teased him about that gray hair.

We made plans to see a movie.

They fell through, but no worry. We would catch up. Someday. A month, a year, whatever.

I asked him about his family.

“Good, very good. All fine.”

 We exchanged emails and phone numbers. He was a techy guy, had a blackberry.

  Shit happened for a month.

……………………………………………………………………

I got a call from my big sister yesterday, she –who- reads every word in the local papers every day , chastises me if I don’t know what the local goddamn board of education is doing about the violence problem in the high school (where dad once was principal), or missed the news about so and so dying, or  such and such happening regarding library expansion plans…

“I’ m so sorry about C., “she said.

“What about C?” though I knew in my heart what she’d say.

…………………………………………………………………………

I had walked by a paper box and seen that a body had been found in R., where sis lives. I’d memorized the details so I could impress her…

The body was c.

He had slit his throat.

…………………………………………………………………………….

Yesterday every possible emotion, empathetic, sympathetic, self-pitying, guilt,anger, and abject misery, flowed through me. Did I mention guilt?I could not walk, or breathe correctly. The ground had been taken from under my feet. I couldn’t think or talk, for I suddenly knew…nothing…

My goddamn empathy decided to kick in : I imagined his hopelessness & misery….

Also his wife and sons’…

I slept a sound sleep.

Today was much better. I cleaned house for a disabled friend.

The movement…of my body…started out slow…I could handle only one thing at a time…and this, my God, turned out to be the secret: to live in one small, tiny , or miniscule moment. Get that done. Then the ground opens afresh under your feet for the next instant of creation.

God’s creation? Ah, maybe. But foremost your own.

God? Karma? Grace? Faith?

Inside,inside,inside….

Bye bro.