Inertia

It was as though someone had dropped a heavy book in the room.

There was no sound, no book, but still it was just as though there had been. The alarmed, sudden waking with the remainder of whatever had occurred still reverberating somehow, just against the walls around me.


I opened my eyes, and backlit in the doorway was Jim. He was just standing there, and I sleepily regarded him,waiting for him to speak. He did not speak.


I knew I locked the doors. I knew the windows were too difficult to reach.

It made sense that he might have needed a place to crash. Staying with his parents since the recent split with his wife, he had gone and stayed over other people's houses a few times. We'd talked about him moving in, since we both recently needed a roommate, both having recently lost one. In his need to fill the space left by his wife and get on with living, he was talking often about finding some girls and bringing them over. I decided to waitto talk more seriously about his moving in until after the initial post-breakup chaos had subsided, and some of this had left his system. Don't get me wrong, I love girls...


So he's standing there, a shadow lit from the next room. I began leaving the light in that room on all night after my roomate and friend for over 10 years underwent a psuedo-midlife crisis at the prospect of turning 30, and poof, just moved away.

Jim is standing in the doorway of my room, I can make out his shape but not his expression. There is no real sense of alarm and he doesn't seem to be needing to say anything. He's probably just found a way in and wants to crash in a safe place. So I drift back to sleep. It is about 2:30 A.M.

The next morning, I don't find Jim, and all of the doors and windows are locked and intact. There is no sign. I figure, well, that was very well-mannered and tidy of him. I take it as a good sign, and head to work.

The drive to work is 1.5 hours on average. My job has no title. I do what needs to be done. And 8 hours later, I'm 1.5 hours from home.

Arriving home that evening, there is a call on the answering machine. It's from a friend of Jim's family named Joe. He apologizes for having to say this on the phone...profusely...to an irritating degree.

"Jim died last night"

He goes on with a little more chitter chat, about wakes and viewings, and apologizes some more. I am not upset that this came over the phone. I appreciate his concern, but it doesn't bother me.

The loss of my friend, the final and irrevocable loss of my friend, does.

I have an anxiety condition and a number of injuries to my spine. This was not always the case. I practiced a lot of martial arts growing up, and was the most capable runner in any contest. In the preceding few years, however, a number of things that had been accumulating all along caught up and I've had to learn how to deal with them, or become a vegetable. I knew that if I became upset, that chemicals would enter my bloodstream and undo months of successful yoga and meditation. I would be unable to work, and therefore, unable to pay rent or feed the cats. I have a lot of cats. Failing them is unacceptable.

The best I could do to deal with this immediately was to set up my bed in a supportive way and just let everything go. It was my hope that I could float through the initial stress without being disabled by them.

I laid in bed and let go. I did not think. I paid attention to the world around me and the feeling of breathing. I zoned out and went into a semi-meditative state. Twenty minutes later, right in my ear, he spoke. There was a faint cacophony behind his voice, like a calm, somewhat muted concert hall. The other voices were not decipherable.

He said "It's peaceful".

The calmness of his voice was surreal, but authentic. He was certainly peaceful. It was the most peaceful I'd ever heard him.

A few seconds later he said "Take care of your cats"

I got up and fed the cats. I had a cigarette. I listened to the message again I went over to his parents house, where they and many of his friends had gathered. He had killed himself. He used some bottle of an ether based solvent and covered himself up with blankets. Everyone was crying. His sister was utterly emotionally destroyed. One of his other friends was laying on the bed where he died, asleep but clutching the sheets and blankets in his hands.

I wanted to tell them. I worked through it in my head. There was no way to tell them that works.  Telling them doesn't help anyone. I still so much wanted to do it. I watched everyone mourn. I watched them suffer, with the most absolute knowledge that when I went home, the feeling of his presence would be there. That he would be there. And I couldn't tell them.

It took a while to understand why. Walking up to their front door, I felt as though I were walking into a wall. The air bruised my mind. It hurt, as if a force field was there. Everyone inside....was in the appropriate state. The natural state. The one nature designed. They were starting the process of separation. They were in agonized mourning. The whole time I was there, all I felt was that pain. That force field. When I went home, I could feel him, not all the time, and sometimes see him out of the corner of my eye, dancing with his long coat like a maniac.

He couldn't go near them. It was because I was calm.
It was because I had to go calm to avoid the physical breakdown.
I was in an unnatural state. I was not starting the process of separation.
I was just trying to stay functional, and by doing so, I left him an opening.