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I remember sky
It was blue as ink
Or at least I think
I remember sky
Today is Chris' birthday.
A birthday should be a happy occasion, right? A day to celebrate all that has passed in the previous year. A day to spend with friends.
I remember past birthdays with Chris. Always a fun week because we were born exactly one week apart. We never forgot because they were so close. Junior year we sat around in the auditorium with Robert, Carolyn, and Pete...the Fab Five...and just...talked. Laughed. For hours. Simple stuff. Chris later told me it was the best birthday he'd ever had.
Two years ago, just before Christmas, Chris killed himself. I hadn't seen him in at least two years. He'd gotten mixed up with drugs, heavily...moved to the city...severed contact with all of us. And he'd always been a little emotionally unstable. But he was always perched just on the rim of my life. I sent him birthday cards every year, never expecting a response. Just wanted him to know I still loved him. I was still there if he wanted to reach out. The last thing I expected to get was a phone call from my brother asking me if I'd heard. "Did you hear about Chris?"
No. I didn't.
I didn't go to the funeral. I thought I'd regret that later, but I don't. The Chris I remember and love is the one who threw himself out the door of the school to eat snowflakes. Who played jump rope in the lobby with Pete's scarf. Who paid $50 for a hideous little model of the Liberator at a convention and spent three hours thinking up stupid questions to ask Paul Darrow. Who wore a hundred year old wool Russian tux to the prom. Who wrote me strange notes between classes and had the guts to tell off our high school director and borrowed my books and never returned them and called me up at three am just to say hi. Who overdubbed the dance at the gym from my West Side Story video with "Anarchy in the UK". Who pissed off the SYSOP on the TARDIS BBS by pestering him with inane questions. Who was a horrible DM and made us all play with the ouija board even when it freaked us out and wrote murder mystery parties and loved "Time After Time" and collected GI Joe dolls and pushed Robert and I towards each other when our friendship skidded a little. Chris was like a little ball of energy in my life that could sometimes turn very gray. And I guess one day, he turned a little too gray.
I wish he hadn't pulled his hand back. I wish he'd called, and let us love him. Because I always will. And most of the year I remember him happily, smiling when I come across pictures.
But today, and on that day in December, I mourn. And I cry, a little. Maybe a little less every year, externally. But my heart aches for the guy who chased the snowflakes and vowed that in 1999, the Fab Five would reunite. That's next year, and we're all far flung. We've all lost touch. But I'm going to try and get the four together, because Chris wanted it. And because I loved him. And I'll never, never stop missing him and the way he perched on the rim of my life.
Today is Chris' birthday.
I remember snow
Soft as feathers, sharp as thumbtacks
Coming down like lint
And it made you squint
When the wind would blow
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