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Well..it's been a while since I posted a journal entry here. I have a lot to tell you...
My last entry was on April 24th, and so much has happened since then that I'm surprised I've made it through it at all....
April 29th, Josh came over to my place for a visit. He knew I hated being at my place alone and had been coming over steadily for quite some time. We chilled out most of the time cause it was too hot to go anywhere, really, and we did all of our running around at night. Sometimes we'd practically watch paint dry, or play on the computer and laptop, or play games, or even watch a movie.
Josh knew I was a bit of a strange one from day one. And I often told peopel when we were hangin out together that I was certifiably psycho. And he'd pipe in with "Yeah, and that's why I like ya. I wouldn't hang out with ya, otherwise." Which was his way of saying, "Hey, I like you because you are an individual, and you don't comform to what other people are like."
I often asked Josh for advice on my clothing, if it looked right on me. I remember finding an outfit to put together out of random bits of clothing and accessories at my house one night and I put it all on and Josh came in and was like "Whoa, dude. Trippy outfit. I like it."
And so it has become my mainstream outfit of choice..
Anyway...after the sun went down that night, we walked over to Alex's house.
Alex is another oen of my goofier friends..and when I say goofy, I mean goofy in a rather abnormal, yet cool way. He was a misfit, like the rest of us, and we all got along great. He had a job, however, that ran him ragged, so the night we came over, he was already out like a light at around 8 pm.
So we sat there, tryign to wake the dude up now and then, but he would just swat at us and turn over and make the weirdest annoyed noise I've ever heard in my life...like a cross between a grunt, a growl, and a groan all rolled into one.
So, at about 10:00 P.M., Josh and I left when we couldn't wake Alex up.
We went back to my place that night and settled in, playing Tekken, or Killer Instinct.
Josh loved Killer Instinct..mainly because one of the characters in it was the product of his brothers mind. His brother James died suspiciously during a recreational trip at Job Corps. He had drowned. But Josh knew him to be an avid swimmer, and so suspected Foul play. Anyway, About the character I was talking about. The character Fulgore in the Killer Instinct game, was the result of a contest Nintendo had put on about creating a video game character that woudl be featured in their next game. Although, the original sketch did not have the pony-tail or the beam claws. His brother had won the contest and so his character was put to use in Killer Instinct.
Anyway, after about an hour of kicking each other's heiny's at KI, we decided to play the Playstation. We played Driver 2 and Tekken 3.
After that, we sat for about two hours and just talked... We talked about religion, astrology, and meteorology. We had decided to go to College together and take courses in Art and Meteorology because Josh wanted to be a proffessional Storm-Chaser AND an artist. I wanted to be an artist, and had some minor interest in meteorology and storm-chasing. So we made the decision and were getting prepared for college...
about an hour and a half into our conversation, we turnd to our own problems, as we liked to tell each other practically everything we were thinking about. I told him that despite my good nature..there was somethign dark inside me..something malevolent and violent...There was an inner rage and anger that I couldn't deal with on my own...I remember telling him..."Josh...there are things that go on in my mind that would get me thrown in the Looney bin...things they would never let me see the light of day again for...and I feel that if I were to tell you...You'd see me differently..."
And I remember his response as clear as day..."Will, You're my best friend. There's nothing about you that you could tell me that would make me think any different of you than I do already. Nothing you could tell me would make me think otherwise."
And I was glad....but I still couldn't tell him what it was that was on my mind for some reason...maybe my own inner fear and paranoia....
Well..at about 5 AM I got on the internet and was searchign for help for my mental issues when I ran across a Gaian who was very helpful in my search, and even tried to help me out. At 7, I went to take a shower and I remember telling Josh "See ya when ya wake up, bro." Cause he was going to go to bed after listening to some music for a bit on his laptop.
I got out of the shower and got back online. Josh was asleep on the couch. at around 9 A.M., Josh had his first siezure of the day. He had Gran Mal Siezures, which only occur when you are asleep. I stayed by his side during the siezure to make sure he would come through it allright. And he did, but he wound up on the floor, despite my best efforts to keep him from flailing too much.
I do not have a lot of upper body strength, and so I could not lift him back onto the couch, luckily, he had fallen off the couch and onto a blanket that, for some reason, was laid out across the floor. When the siezure was ove,r I waited about ten minutes before I woke him up, so that his muscles would have time to relax, and told him to lift his head for me. I helpe dhim lift his head and placed a soft pillow under him so he wouldn't have to rest his head against the hard tile floor.
After about 2 hours, checking on him now and then, I went to bed myself...I woke up again at 3 P.M. and checked on him. he was fine. Sleeping like a baby.
So I went back to bed and woke up at around 5 P.M. because of something that was missing from the atmosphere I was used to with Josh around...I didn't hear the playstation going. So I sat up, soemwhat bewildered at the silence, rubbed the sleep from my eyes and checked the clock. When I saw what time it was, and made the connection to the lack of playstation noises, I figured Josh had either left, or was asleep still. I opened up my bedroom door and steppe dinto bright daylight, as my bedroom window has a piece of cardboard over it to keep out the sunlight, and looked aroudn the room at the TV, then toward the front door of my apartment, and blinked when I looked back down and saw Josh still laying in the floor.
I was confused. Josh ~never~ slept this long, even after a siezure. So I went to shake him to wake him up with my foot..when that didn't work, I knelt and shook him by the arm. But the moment I touched him, I felt cold flesh. Stiff, rigid...
I immediately grabbed hold of his arm and turned him over, speaking his name worriedly. "Josh? Josh, Wake up dude!" I touched his stomach, which was still warm, then felt his face, which was cold. I noticed he wasn't breathing. I began to panic in an odd, unbelievable way.
The thought was creeping into my mind that my best friend was dead. But I held it back.. There was a sort of mucus all around his mouth form where he'd been laying face down. I quickly cleane dit off and began performing C.P.R..
The taste I got in my mouth was just...aweful...I continued to perform CPR to the best of my ability, trying to breathe life back into m best friends lungs...but deep down I knew he was already gone, but was denying myself this fact.
Not ten seconds after my attempt to save his extinguished life, My friend Johnny knocked ont he door and came in. "Hey Will, Jim and I wanted to....What's wrong?"
"I think Josh is dead..." And the tone of my voice was strange, almost disconnected from emotion at that moment, as if my body were there, but my soul had retreated into the very depths of my mind.
"What?! Have you called 911?!"
"No...I don't have a phone..."
And he ran to call 911. I stared at my best friend, laying dead in my livign room floor, and felt every ounce of energy I had leave my body. I could barely stand. I was banging my head against my bedroom door in frustration, in agony, but no tears would flow out. I felt like the entire world had just come crashing down around me...
I heard the sirens, as I had so many times before, but they sounded so much louder...so much more frantic...piercing... Because I knew where they were going...and I headed into the hallway and sat down against the wall two apartments down from mine. I was shaking, I was running what had occured through my mind..
"My best friend...My best friend died in my living room floor...." "how...?" "Why...?"
I originally thoguht myself to be to blame for his death, as, when I found him face down, I'd found him face down in the massive kitchen light globe with a plastic bag in it.
I remembered having taken it down during cleaning and hadn't put it back up two days earlier...It had somehow migrated into the living room floor.
THing was, when he had wound up on the floor after his seizure, I made absolutely sure that everything was out of his way, so that he was out of harms way....It was unbelievable to find him face down in it...I thought that that was what had killed him..
I thoguht he had had another siezure and rolled into it and suffocated...I felt so wretched, so sick...and was beginning to break down completely by the time Jom, another good friend of mine, and Johnny showed back up.
Jim is a dear, dear friend of mine. He is in his late fifties and has been in a couple of wars. He has long silvery-gray hair tied up in several hairties in one long pony-tail. He was a biker of sorts, and a Musician..and was always acting his shoe size rather than his age..which is why I liekd him.
Jim asked me what had happened, and when he heard me say that Josh was dead, the color left his face. He looekd as though he had aged ten years and he looked me right in the eye, a truely sorry, appologetic and understanding look in his eyes.
He knelt and hugged me and I jsut broke down and started sobbing into his shoulder.
I'm a very emotional man. Always wore my feelings on my sleeves and never harmed anyone...I am a man of love and compassion for my fellow man, even those who have wronged me. I've always been kind and gentle to everyone.
I remember crying into Jim's Shoulder and him holding me comfortingly, telling me to just let it all out.
We sat in the hallway and when the police department arrived, we waited outside patiently, and I was going into shock, chain-smoking cigarrette after cigarette and becoming increasingly agitated by the voices I heard coming from my apartment..
The officers inside my apartment were laughing and carrying on, as if the 20 year old in my apartment were just another body to tag...
I told the officers outside that I wasn't happy about it...
"Would you pelase inform your...co-workers...that I do ~not~ appreciate that they are laughing and carrying on when my best friend is lying in their midst, dead!"
And she did so and started to try and appologize..
"We have to keep an open mind and distance ourselves---" I interupted her. "That is no excuse. Show a little more respect than that and keep your personal lives at home. This is your 'workplace'. ~Act~ like it. You wouldn't want people laughing and carrying on around ~your~ dead best friend, now would you?"
She was silent afterwards, embarrassed by the actions of her colleagues...
Needless to say, that night was hard for a lot of us...It was especially hard on Alex when he saw the body, as he knew we'd been by the night before, but he had been too tired to chat, and he knew that he would never get to talk to Josh again.
The entire "Brotherhood of Sith" was there that night at my apartment building.
The brotherhood of Sith is a group of my friends that decided to stick together through thick and thin, and we became a brotherhood. Not your typical brotherhood, but a brotherhood devoted to helping those in need, and helping one another through troubled times....This was most certainly our most troubled time yet..
There was Alex, Josh's trainee's for Tai Kwan Do, Patrick, Michael, and Rayray. There was RJ, who was also one of Josh's best friends, Ray, who is just a big teddy-bear and big-hearted man, Jeremy, Another member of the Brotherhood, and Kitty, Josh's Ex-girlfriend, who still deeply loved Josh but believed she had hurt him too much in the past to ever think of having a chance with him again.
All of us were there, in our black trenchcoats. About ten minutes after everyone arrived, it began to rain.
RJ was.....upset....and pised....He had been talking to josh just the day before. RJ is a fighter, plain and simple. He is young, brash, and always looking to get into some trouble, but always there to help a friend.
We all went up to Paul's for a while. My apartment felt too....painful..to return to just yet...but, that night, we all eventually walked back to my apartment...
The hall seemed so long, and the door to my apartment seemed so far away. When we got there, I hesitated. I didn't want to go in...but I also did want to go in...
SO we entered....I didn't have to show them where Josh had been laying, as the spot ont he floor was clear enough...I have a shag carpet in my living room, and the imprint of where he was layign when I found him was there.
Afte about ten minutes, everyone settled in, but no one dared walk in the place where Josh had been laying. Kitty layed down beside where Josh's final place of rest had been, and she sobbed quietly, running her hands over the pillow he had used.
BUt....we had all decided that we would Honor Josh's wishes to be remembered for how he lived, not how he died. and I did my best to cheer everyone up.
A tender, heartbreaking moment occured when I found Josh's favorite outfit in my bedroom closet. As well as his TrenchCoat, hat, and boots...
I was hanging them up and trying to remain calm and not cry. Where I was hanging them was in plain sight for all to see. to Bear witness that a friend had passed on and would always be remembered.
The following night..I was aloen for a while inside my apartment, and I lay where he lay when he died, and I cried....and cried...and cried.
I felt so lost...so forlorn, like a lost lamb that the Shepherd had forgotten and left alone in the valley. I felt angry...here I was...24 years old..and God had taken my best friend from me...My best friend..who was only 20 and hadn't really begun to live yet...I began asking the same questions many christians ask themselves when faced with impossible odds.
"Why, Lord? Why did you take him away from me?" "Lord...Please...take me away from here...do not make me go through this again..."
Much the same had happened in 98 when my grandfather died....and I had shut the world out after that, only to open up to it again and hope for the best.
a week later, we had his memorial Service..he had been cremated.
many people showed up to say their last goodbye's. All of which held a warm place in their hearts for Josh...Some of whom had barely known him, but he had touched them deeply in the short span of time that he knew them.
two weeks later, My ex-girlfriend dumped me. She wouldn't tell me why, only that "It's not you, It's me..."
Joshua's cat had had kittens...so two weeks after I got dumped, I got one of them, the runt of the litter, which I had chosen personally, and named him Joshua.
He was a white, gray, and black striped tabby. he was rambunctious and a troublemaker from the start, but he liked to play.
about a week after I got him, Something terrible happened...
I needed to move some cords out from under my couch, so I had lifted it to move the cords... It was one of those heavy recliner couches, with the recliners on the ends and two steel support beams that ran across the bottom of the middle section.
20 minutes pass before I realize the kitten is nowhere in sight...
I found him under the couch, lifeless and still warm...
I tried to recuscitate(sp?) him and gave him mouth to mouth, but again, I was too late...
The kitten was gone, just like Josh was gone...I sobbed as I wrapped him in an old antique cloth....I cared more for the animal than I did for the fabric, which was some 30 years old at the least...I placed him in a shoe box, and spent a week tryign to procure a shovel in order to bury him...
I hadn't thought about putting him int he freezer to keep the smell away....so he sat, in a box that was too big for the freezer anyway, in my bedroom witht he door closed...
When the day finally came to bury him (Cause I had finally gotten hold of a shovel) we took him to Turkey Mountain, a place Josh and I visited frequently to hang out on the rocks that overlooked South Tulsa, and buried him beneath a tree that I know I will never forget for as long as I live...
I call it "the Human Tree" because of the way it looks. it looks like human beings had been stacked in sitting or upright positions (Just the trunks) in a very artistic manner that made it look as though the tree had swallowed people (It even had a knothole in the top between two armlike branched).
It was a tree I had wanted to show Josh but never got the chance to.
I'v eharboured guilt for so long about Josh's death...but a couple of weeks ago, I had a dream....
I dreamed that Josh and I were playing video games in my bedroom on the tv. When the game was over, we turned it off and got to talking...
"Ya know, I've missed you so much, bro.", I said to him. "Yeah, I know....I've been worried about you..so I've stuck aroudn and kept an eye on you...and I want you to know that I'll always be here, and there is nothing you should feel guilty over. You're my best friend, Will...You always will be."
And we hugged.....for the first tiem in all of my life..I dreamed of a hug.....a completed hug, I should say...
FOr I have often had dreams about lost loved ones that ended as I was going to hug that person...
I awoke with tears in my eyes....I was crying...crying tears of joy and release from the guilt I had felt for so long...
I now have a job working Part time at Burger King. It's not much, but it pays the bills and also allows me time to work on my passion...Art.
I, unfortunately, missed the deadline for college for the fall, so I have to wait until the next semester starts...
BUt..things are well now...The girl who would have been Josh's if he hadn't died, is now possibly my girl...we talk, and keep each other going, keep each other sane...
THings are starting to look up now...
TypoKing · Fri Sep 01, 2006 @ 11:34am · 1 Comments |
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