for my old friend

The moment I saw the obituary on his Facebook page, I thought it was a Facebook joke. You know those stupid gimmicky bullshit spam things that people pass around online: 'click here to see how you'll die' and you put in the requisite personal info and then you get this tombstone image with your name ' Here lies Bill Smith 1979-2042 'and some supposedly humorous epitaph: 'Run over by alien crossing ocean while eating squirrel sandwich. ' You get the idea.

That's how the world has become right? One big fat fucking joke I guess. Except this time it wasn't. It wasn't a joke at all.

When it really sank in, though, when I looked at his handsome face and familiar smile beaming off my computer screen, when I read the painfully surrendered words of acceptance that his mother wrote, when I realized it was so fucking true and real and final it made my stomach ache in a way I can't explain. And that's when I just fell into this deep, immediate despair.

And in that despair – in the pacing I suddenly needed to do in my small house, the frantic pacing I did while I processed this end to a life, while I cried those honest, wet tears that hold you captive, his whole life, and mine too, flashed before me - I began to look back, back, back.

It was like some part of me that I'd held onto all these years - some part of me that I could call up and revisit, someone who knew me when I was so young, someone who I also knew when he was so young, before the inescapable damage of the world weighed heavily on our souls with it's burdening angst but also it's overpowering joy, when our lives lay out before us, this big, amazing thing to be lived and we were just beginning it – that part of me, that part of us, was just now gone. And it had been gone for several months. I just didn't know it.

The thing is, it wasn't gone. It was just encapsulated. The way you put something in a newel post for a century. All tucked away like a diary or a scrapbook. The way life happens in your mind. Pockets of the past stored up there like a grandmother's sweater in your brain. All you have to do is go up there and root around in the pockets and you'll find them all. This life, this person, now had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I was just so unprepared for the end.

He was my friend. My lifelong friend. And he was one of the purest friends I've ever had.

When I say pure, I mean we were never lovers. We never even kissed. We were just true friends, first a boy and girl, then a man and woman, friends. It is true we both liked one another in a 'more than friends' way. But it was always at different times. During highschool, I liked him but he liked Annie Leef. (Which made me not like Annie Leef. She seemed fake and you could tell she bleached her upper lip. I couldn't think of anything else bad to say about her. Just: how dare she.) Then he liked me but I was infatuated with Sander Robinson. (Which made him make fun of Sander Robinson for any reason he could find. Usually something like:  what do you see in that kid? Guy is a total 'squid.') Then, a few years later, I liked him but he had a summer love out in California. Then, more years after that, he liked me but I was fully into the idiocy of my twenties by then. We were just never in sync that way. And we weren't meant to be. We were just meant to always be friends. I'm glad that we had that innocence, that we had a pure and true love for one another. That is a pretty rare thing.

We met at Proctor Academy, a small private school in New Hampshire, when I was 13 and he was 15. I can't even recall how we met only that we were always friends. I was a freshman and, as he informed me, therefore a 'boeuf' while sophomores were 'squids' and all I knew was that I just wasn't cool. But he made me his friend. And he never let me down. Sure, he teased me, and made fun of me for being young and unaware, but he also loved to come to my parents' house for weekends and he got me stoned for the first time in the Blacksmith Shop at school. It was underground and dark and interesting and he was always making things down there. Not a lot of students hung out there. So it was kind of our place. He made me an iron key in that shop, too, something I probably still have in the attic of my parent's house in Maine. I remember when he gave it to me. It was a gift. No big deal because that was his way. But his eyes said differently. He was just a giver.

Every May 3^rd, every single May 3^rd since 1987, he got a phone call from me. "Hey Matt, it's the official Coke Holder, Happy Birthday." I was the 'official Coke holder' because one time he asked me to hold his soda for him while he zipped up his parka at the Duke's Den (the snack shack type place where you could get junk food and sodas on campus) and when I went to hand it back he shook his head and smiled that huge smile of his and said, 'Nope, from now on, Jess, you're the 'official Coke holder.' Uh huh, I get it. I'm your little kid-sister type personal slave. Because, I'm sure, at that point, I was the one with the crush. His eyes were that crazy blue that draw you inexplicably in and I'm sure I looked at him like a little whipped sap. I mean, c'mon I was only a kid. And at that point, he knew he had the power. So that was that. Official Coke Holder for life.

When I think back to my years at Proctor, I remember so clearly the hill between the dorms and the dining hall, and when I was walking by myself up and down that hill I would listen to my Walkman. It was a Christmas present from my parents and it was the smallest Walkman they made back then. I was listening to Peter Gabriel repeatedly. All the students at Dartmouth were blaring his new album out of their windows and I remember feeling like one day I'd be one of them. In my mind I was becoming one of them already, practicing to be an adult. That hill would get slippery with ice from so many students going up and down it all day and it was treacherous and windy. I would hold my body tight and prepare to fall each and every time. I never fell but I was always ready to fall. That hill sort of embodied my adolescent self-consciousness. Always ready to fall.

I remember the strange sense of loudness all hidden in the silence at dusk (do you know that sound? Simon and Garfunkel defined it best and it all made sense to me in my adolescent pangs of insecurity.) It seemed to call out from the purple-blue gray skies when we were all returning from a long, satisfying, red-cheeked afternoon of skiing. I remember the sheen and gleam of new fallen snow and only one sound in the near infinite stillness:  the crunch of boots underfoot. Some of the most profound moments that defined my heart to this day, were moments when I was alone, crossing campus at night, seeing warm lights an people moving inside buildings and the glowing moon overhead, and things like simply looking out across at the stunning expanse of fresh snow in all it's glittering mystery. So much gratefulness can exist in these small moments if you let it.  The total awareness of the tenuousness of this life can give you so much during these reflective solitary times.

Orchids have this same sparkling in their white petals. Have you seen this? It is absolute magic. It is a perfect visual language. Snow has this very thing. And snow holds onto it, keeps it, protects it, speaks it, all winter long. All you have to do is watch and listen. And when you live in this climate, when it seeps into your soul, when you live within this precarious dance of death and rebirth, when you witness your own life unfold in periods of deep slumber and vivid consciousness, the intricate details form a world that lives inside you for your whole life.

Every time we had a chance to catch up, usually on the phone, he was recovering from some kind of accident. He was, always it seemed, dancing with the devil, testing life, pushing it, living it in a passionate, full way that most people wouldn't and don't . But it was his way, his journey, his life's blood. It's what he loved. Whether it was racing Ducati's at 125mph or extreme skiing or (in his mother's words) existing with ' that willingness to take a risk, to dare' whatever it was that fueled him at the time, Matt was happy just living life to the fullest in the way he knew how. I know he almost died once before. He was in the hospital with so many broken bones. Motorcycle accident as I recall, although I can't be 100% sure on that. All I know is that it was bad, whatever it was, and it was a close call. We weren't always in constant contact but we were never that far off from the major events of our lives.

When I was at acting school at Emerson College in Boston in 1993, he wrote me a simple postcard. It was no big deal. Just a chatty postcard from a ski trip to Crested Butte, Colorado, from one friend to another. He invited me to come ski with him, even offered to loan me the money to get out there. Then he said in typical humorous Matt style, better yet, get your parents to pay. But I knew he'd fly me out there. He asked me to come be with him so many times over the years. Looking back, I wish I'd taken him up on more of his amazing invitations. I think of the experiences I could have had.

I've kept that little postcard with me all this time. In fact, I've always known exactly where it is wherever I've lived. When I was in New York, it was on my fridge. In Los Angeles, it was tucked into my blue velvet journal. When I lived in Philadelphia, it was in the stereo drawer. Here in Florida, it has been in my office, second drawer down. It's always been with me.

All this time. Matt's familiar handwriting. A postcard to me. A nineteen-cent stamp.

My aunt came to visit this week and she offered to help me organize my house a bit. She's a genius at organization so, of course, I jumped at the chance for her help. So we started going through my books and papers. She suggested I give at least some of my books away but I love my books and just can't get rid of them. So she started stacking them to arrange them better. And, among the stacks, there was this old, hardcover coffee table book, something I hadn't looked at in years and years. It was given to me by my grandparents, when I was far too young to appreciate it.  The book is called 'The Musicians' by Sempe. Sempe, if you're unfamiliar, is the artist/cartoonist whose work appears regularly on the cover of The New Yorker. It is iconic and often comedic.

So I flipped open the very old, very unappreciated book with its torn and curled dustjacket that has been carried from place to place for decades. Immediately inside was a piece of still-fresh-looking academic notebook paper. It was the beginning of a letter. 'Dear Matt' it began. I couldn't believe it.

Just a couple sentences. That was all: 'I had such a great weekend with you. We need to relive the 'Blacksmith Shop days' but I guess we can do that when I come visit you in August…' Here was an unfinished letter that just lay there, frozen in time. Just waiting for me, for this week to open up this old, old book and stumble upon it.

There was no date at the top, nothing but my unmistakable handwriting that was indicative of me at around age 14.  Why was I seeing this? Why now? Why? I can't help but wonder. It's as if he's speaking to me even now. Like God put that old Sempe book there for me to see. Like God said, he's still with you. Matt is right here. He's here right now.

Some people, like postcards we pack up and take with us wherever we go, some people never leave us. Matt will never leave me. Even though he's gone now, even though his life was cut tragically short, he lived his life the way he wanted to, the way he needed to. And even while miles and time separated us, we were never far from each other's thoughts. I carried his memory, his spirit, simply embodied in a paper postcard, from place to place, through the journeys of my life.

As my mom and I both remarked while walking the beach just today, 'He had a look in his eye, didn't he?'

'Yes, he did.'

'What do you think that was?'

"He was so handsome, so wonderful, so right there with you…but…'

'There was a thing apart. Right? There was something about him, a look in his eye, that was…apart somehow.'

'I know. Apart. That's it.'

'Yes. Like he wasn't long for this world and he knew it.'

Like he wasn't long for this world and he knew it.

There are so many more memories of him that I have, the usual stuff I guess, details that aren't all that important. It's who he was, what his soul was about and what he meant to me that I hold dear. His face I can clearly see, his walk I can see, he walked like he was on air, he was somehow just not even tied to the ground. He had this weightlessness, this contagious energy like he was going somewhere. Anyone who knew Matt knows exactly what I'm talking about. He was always moving. Always searching.

When people die young, they are always young.  He'll never be sick or old. He'll always be beautiful and handsome and full of life. And as sad as it is, it's a reminder that your own life can be gone just as suddenly. And it's so important to remember that each day is the only one you have. That's what I will try to remember when I get caught up in some stupid bullshit going on, when I'm short-sighted about a work disappointment or some guy I liked who treated me like dog shit, or being annoyed by someone who takes too long to order their damn latte at Starbucks. It's easy to forget how good you have it when piddly stuff gets in the way. But it's so, so, so important to be grateful. So important to be grateful. Gratefulness affects every part of your life – and makes life better for everyone you ever touch.

And, after all, when I look around, this is all pretty damn good. This life I have is pretty good.

Matt has always been with me. I've tucked him into old books and journals, packed him up and moved from place to place, kept him alive in papers, in letters, in photos. He is one of my soulmates in this life. And he is not just a memory of when we were young and all the things we went through. His life is an entire world inside my heart.