I can remember the night I met my first dead body.
Lord, how it still haunts me. My skin is crawling with spiders just as it did that night, when I stared at Timmy’s tinted eye-lids. The next morning I woke up mimicking the position he had been manipulated into, unable to move a muscle. I was frozen, imagining what it must have been like for him. Had he been there, watching over his family as they stood in a line, greeting every person to step foot into the funeral home? Had he seen the pity in every single pair of eyes as they murmured their condolences and made promises that everything would turn out alright?
Sometimes I still wake up on my back with my fingers intertwined across my stomach. Now, over a year later, I shake out of the position in disgust. It’s disgusting to me that I can feel so attached to someone who was only barely in my life, that I can continue to think about the poor boy like I actually knew him. I didn’t. I knew stories, I’d heard rumors, I knew of him.
I went to the service for Timmy’s family. I had grown up alongside the middle child, Clark, who had slowly become my best friend over the years. We played trumpet together in band, and through the time together, we were able to grow quite close. We turned to each other for advice, comfort, and a good laugh. I always prided myself on being able to make him feel better, but when he pulled me to him and hugged me while he stood managing the assembly line of people that night, I didn’t know what to say. I realized that sometimes, there isn’t anything you can say to make someone feel better. I remember letting an apology for his loss slip out, telling him we could get ice cream and vent and cry, and celebrating a small victory when I saw a twinkle in his eye. That was all I needed at the time: a twinkle.
I mentioned I never truly knew Timmy, and I didn’t. I had heard Clark ramble time and time again about how Timmy did this and Timmy did that, but I had only had a few personal encounters with him. He had been in band a few years before Clark and I were participants, so the upperclassmen took joy in telling us stories of Timmy running over things with his car and smoking weed outside the school. He had a limp because he had been in an awful wreck, because of what I’m still not sure of to this day. He had a problem with vices: alcohol, marijuana, and later on, the harder drugs. After all, Timmy died young; he was only in his 20s. He died of an overdose.
Death due to overdose is a common story and scare tactic to steer kids away from drugs – at least, so I thought. I had listened to the stories a thousand and one times of someone dying of an overdose, but to actually have been acquainted with someone who did die of one feels almost unreal. I was so angry the night of the funeral. How could Timmy have overdosed, leaving his family to deal without him? How could he have been so foolish? How dare he leave them behind? It wasn’t until I was meandering throughout the funeral home that I picked up a story Timmy had written as a kid about a snowflake.
This story was about a beautiful snowflake that didn’t feel like it measured up to its peers. It felt different than every other snowflake, but it wanted with all its might to feel the same. This snowflake had dreams: dreams of making friends, going to college, fitting in. I remember reading this story; I clutched at the paper, feeling ridiculous for having been so angry with Timmy. He didn’t start doing drugs with the intention of getting addicted, he didn’t expect to eventually overdose and pass away. According to this story, little Timmy the snowflake had aspirations, dreams, and expectations that did not end in “and when I’m in my 20s I will overdose on illegal drugs and die.”
Clark was a wreck for months after that. He still is, but he’s better at handling it now, or so I assume. Clark and I aren’t very close now. He went to UC and I went to NKU, and even though we made plans to eat a meal together at least once a month, we could never get our acts together – or should I say, I could never get my act together. I wonder how he feels about that. Does he feel like I left him? Does he feel betrayed? I didn’t mean to stray away, school just harbored all my attention. The last time I checked, he wasn’t very happy with me. He grew aggravated with how unavailable I was, even when I tried to explain I was doing everything I could. But was I?
Clark pushed everyone away after his brother’s death, but at that point there weren’t that many people to push away. Timmy’s death stained Clark’s skin and naturally repelled the people around away from him, including me. He walked around school with his head down, mouth sealed shut, a dark cloud hanging over his existence. His cloud hung in the air, filled each breath with poison and silenced all attempts to make him feel better. While this scared most people away form Clark, I found it almost alluring. It called to me, begged for me to help, and I couldn’t resist. He was my best friend, I had to be there for him. But somehow, I began to experience it all with him.
He had convinced himself that he was an awful brother, specifically remember his graduation party at this house. I was there, and so was Timmy. Clark was outside playing basketball with some other friends, and I was sitting in the grass talking to Clark’s younger brother, Harry. Timmy walked out of the house holding a beer and began to pester Clark to let him play basketball with them. Clark acquiesced, but after a few minutes. Timmy’s voice started to grow louder, slightly mocking Clark and trying to weigh in on conversations he didn’t know anything about. It was clear Clark was becoming irritated, but instead of backing down, Timmy spurred him until he finally snapped. Go away! he yelled. Leave me and my friends alone! I had never heard him so angry, so raw, so frazzled. Harry shifted uncomfortably next to me and picked up the conversation where we had left it. I gathered that this wasn’t an unusual scene for the brothers. After another second, Timmy sputtered a stream of profanities and made his way back inside.
When I started paying more attention, I realized that the two were constantly fighting. Clark and I were out having lunch once, and Timmy called him in some sort of drug-induced state pleading for a ride home. Clark was so irritated he refused to go get him until I finally convinced him he should. Thinking back further, I can remember how Timmy used to tease Clark when coming to pick him up from band rehearsal: moving the car forward when Clark was trying to get in, locking him out of the car, jerking as he drove.
“He was never doing anything wrong,” Clark whispered to me one day. “I was just too sensitive and selfish.”
“Brothers fight,” I had whispered back. “His problem wasn’t because of you.”
But that was exactly the way Clark felt, and he had no intention of feeling any other way. It was as if blaming himself for Timmy’s overdose was the only way he could feel better. It killed me, it broke my heart to know that he had decided something so tragic was his own fault. I couldn’t say anything to make him feel better anymore; I could never get that twinkle in his eye to return, that little spark of hope that I last saw at the funeral. There was only so much I could take before I, too, would get sucked in to Clark’s overhanging dark cloud, drowning in his sadness. It stained my thoughts black, stained my attitude negative. I was seeing the world like Clark was: badly. Everything became my fault, everyone became a pity case, and I became my own enemy. I would take the blame for things that I didn’t even know about, for things I wasn’t even there for. I was so used to hearing how everything was Clark’s fault that I soon associated everything as my fault. It was my fault I couldn’t help Clark overcome the pain of losing his brother. It was my fault that a girl I knew years ago was addicted to heroin, and it was my fault that the world was such an awful place. I was stuck in Clark’s mindset. Even though I wouldn’t admit it, my subconscious knew I was poisoning myself by jumping under Clark’s umbrella. It steered me away from him, one step at a time, until I barely talked to him anymore. I started to see the sunlight, see the good in the world again. It was then I realized I couldn’t help Clark if he didn’t want to help himself, just like he couldn’t have helped Timmy unless Timmy had wanted to help himself. Timmy’s death wasn’t Clark’s fault just like Clark’s sorrow wasn’t mine.
Timmy wasn’t my brother, but I was still sucked in to the depressive, dark state that Clark entered. I couldn’t have felt even half of what Clark must have been feeling, but I still reflect on those days as one of the darkest times of my life. It hurts me to stare at the shell of a person who used to be so full of life and happiness and now only see pain. It hurts me even more to know that I was able to pull myself out from that state, but left Clark there to fend for himself.
indigobelle 