the swell of the music

I was making a play-list of stuff for my kids to listen to in the car. A hodge-podge of songs to help broaden their horizons. It is great when they will really dig a song and ask, "What's this song??" (right now they really dig the song, "Geno".) I put on a song I hadn't listened to in a long time but recall liking a lot and when it came on, all kinds of memories/emotions came out with it. I was reminded of the death of a friend when I was about twenty. Probably a few months before he died, I downloaded the song (napster was the hot thing at the time) and was hooked on it and I would talk to him late at night while listening to this song on repeat. (though come to think of it, I also had some Depeche Mode going on in there as well) He and I hadn't grown up together but near one another and we had a number of mutual friends. (partly because of where I went to college) I don't know what things were on his end, but on my end, I liked our friendship because it seemed to lack all the weird tension that seemed to exist with a number of male friends of that period. (which is likely normal at that age) We would do our usual complaining about our romantic failures. He was hung up on a girl who was with someone else, yet she still pulled him into her particular brand of emotional drama. Initially I was with a guy who was awfully talented at emotional abuse and making me feel like the worst person in the world. (J. was a patient sounding board when I was trying to work up the courage to end things with Mr. Emotional abuse and I would listen to him as he talked about this girl and the hold she had on him.) Then I moved onto an assortment of guys who meant very little. Amidst all of that, I could just talk to J. about silly stuff, confide in one another when we felt low, and our attempts to escape what life presented to us. (a couple of former out-casts trying to pass.) It wasn't terribly deep but it still mattered.

That Summer, I dropped off the planet for about a month. I was at my Mom's and my computer went tits up (had to wait for new bits and all) and then he became sick with a nasty case of the flu so I didn't hear from him. I wasn't wildly surprised I didn't hear from him. (he said he wanted to sleep a lot) You know how it can be. People get busy in the Summer. Then his roommate finally got a hold of me and told me J. had died. (The flu turned into pneumonia and his heart was weak and he suffered from cardiac arrest.) I thought it was some twisted joke. It wasn't. He told me about the funeral. How the girl J. adored was there and being incredibly emotional and just how sad everything was. I said the usual things. "How awful" and how terribly sorry I was.
I didn't really feel anything. It was like I was unable to grasp the permanent absence. I did missed him but I felt greater regret that no one had been able to reach me to tell me.

Yesterday as I heard the song, I was over-come with a sadness I had not felt in a very long time. It has been well over a decade and life of course changes a great deal. Who knows what he might have been like or if either one of us would have remained friends. But he was a good friend then.