The Death of a Best Friend and Suicide of a Remarkable Child

They have left us. One of my best friends and then his son are dead. It’s been a year now for my friend and only a couple of weeks for his 14 year old son, my son’s best friend, who hung himself. There is not enough space in my mind to completely comprehend this. I have placed my heart and soul in a small box holding this back from my loved ones. They are my family. I am the Nouno (Greek godfather) to their oldest son and their mother Nouna (Greek godmother) to my daughter. The First was Markus, who at 51 left us for reasons I will not discuss, nor do I have the information of why, as I refuse to ask. He is just gone found by his son Dylan who then took his life a month to the day later. They lived across the lake from me and we spent a thousand meal together over the years. My children at their house or theirs at mine all day or overnight. Their clothes left at my house, our towels from the lake at theirs. I found myself cleaning out the back of a closet last week of my son’s (which I should have cleaned years ago) and found shirts, socks and old birthday cards from Dylan. A remarkable child. No shit. An artist, Opera singer, fearless in love, play, humor, and speaking his mind and worst of all fearless in death it seems.

I have hid this from all, these feelings which haunt me, but putting up the strong front for others. It’s ripping me apart. I am sure I will discuss this again. I can only stand this in this open, but closed, forum of this blog for so long. I could not discuss this with my family or others and I cannot today. It’s not that I cannot feel for others and discuss this; I just want to walk in front of a fast train when I think about it.

A remarkable child, not to say others who have lost others were not remarkable, it’s just that he was a good child who did great things and effected all those around him in brazed and outrageously groundbreaking actions and words virtually every time you saw him. The week before he died we spent the day together in the Ghetto in Detroit as I introduced him to the realness and beauty of the city of Detroit. It was one of the best days I have ever had. I taught him all I could in a day, and that day I guess was his goodbye to me.  I cannot express my grief without the shear inability to even start to understand his mother’s and his brother’s loss. I cannot even start to feel in the open as the tender souls who are my wife and children were precariously ripped apart and alas, I am motionless in heart and robotic in motion around them. A monk has told me that I cannot help others when my wound is this deep.

I am done for the moment. I cannot reread this, so it may not make sense.