I Googled an old, dead friend--how does this really work, this Googling, this dying, this one-time friendship? I mean, beyond what I can see, how? The searching, I'm thinking, is like archeology, a screen shifting back-and-forth, sifting dirt, unearthed fragments, detritus releasing stories, illuminating dark spaces.
My screen says "DELL," an angled "E," its sifter is quotes around a name, "Jeffrey S" (I'll call him here). A search button touch, it's shuffling bits and bytes, and there is Jeff. I guess I'm looking for some virtual footprint, or fingerprint, or two.
There's his full name, no mistake. I click (Arise), Chicago Tribune, a death date and obituary, another click to lift this fragment from its somewhere, its ethereal grave. Across the top reads "Word Count 58," below, a teaser line, thirty words or so, just to entice, a hook for buyers seeking those other twenty-eight, those life-encompassing, $2.95 worth of word remains, those next-of-kin, beloveds/bereaved, those left behinds.
My brother Gary texted me about Jeff's death. Texted? WTF? It's come to that? So we started this whole text-fest nostalgia trip.
I said, Jeff's sister Angie, bro, remember her?
Oh, What a stone-cold, drop-dead, go-to-Hell, babe she was. Oh, man, don't get me started, fine as mid-summer and Roberto Clemente line-drives beating the sorrowful Cubs at Wrigley--FOINE. (Gary's a tad melodramatic.)
Shut up, I said. Remember she had that crush on Dave (our other brother), him pumping gas at the Sinclair on Harlem, acting likes some gearhead, couldn't gap a plug to save his life, and Angie, man, standing at the soda machine, with that hippie-look, those hip-huggers, bandana, hardly sipping her Coke, waiting, but Davy, shit, he never saw it.
Hell, man, he saw it, just couldn't get with her because she smoked "the wicked weed." What a dork. She smoked, alright.
Just shut your mouth. I'll tell him you said that. (Haw, haw.)
Oh, we were "LOL'ing" our selves silly on that memory lane trip. I guess this seems crass, to joke around in the light of such a tragedy, but it truly felt good just remembering what we could remember, what seemed especially funny now.
But, hey, I said, I heard Angie OD'ed on smack, in '82, and died.
No, bro. She's alive-and-well, living in Florida, on Facebook, too, a gen-u-ine middle-aged beauty, married, grown kids. She's Angela, now.
I'm glad of that.
So what happened to old, Jeff, I wondered? I left Chicago thirty years ago. We used to warm the barstools at Nick's almost every night, but I had to quit, had to move, one more time. I guess that bridge did get burned. Maybe I'm glad it did. Who knows if he might also have been me in the end? Gary kind of filled in some of what was missing outside those twenty-eight words. Jeff kept on drinking, got on smack himself, stayed on it, in fact, then crack, then heart attack at 48, in and out of rehabs, emergency rooms, on the street for awhile when his mom and dad got too old to care for themselves, let alone him.
What really struck me is how little I could glean of whatever I thought was the "real" Jeff from the computer, Gary, or even my own memory. So much had faded. I was glad to hear about Angie, Angela, that is. I ended up e-mailing her and found her to be a delightful, accomplished working mother of two. Having thought her dead all these years it was as though she'd resurrected, so to speak, in my imagination.
But what about Jeff?
The last few words in the obit teaser said he "passed suddenly" at Lutheran General. Based on what information I was able to see, I imagined him in an ER, maybe even the corridor, sitting alone, or lying perhaps, splayed on a gurney, an IV attached if he made it that far. Did he walk in or did the paramedics scoop him off the street? Nobody seems to have known, if you ask Gary. I didn't ask Angela about that.
Maybe I can change this scene with a little trick of imagery. Will that help? I don't know. Instead of wheezing, clawing the air, trying to cleave to "this side" in some pathetic scene, as though he were trying to reel back in the ghost, contain the anima, maybe I can see Jeff lying like Jesus, half-shrouded in the Pieta. Maybe I can even place myself standing there, some cheesy Hollywood scene, saying "Let go, brother. Let go." Or reassure him with something like spiritus sanctus. Everything that Is, Is sacred. And you'll always be here in our memory. In fact, maybe not.
Perhaps those mental tricks would be more for me than for him, anyway.
What I truly can say, based on what addiction did teach me, is that his life outside all 58 words probably didn't end up too pretty. Maybe that's why my brother and I shared a laugh or two in our memories. Because we could. I guess that sounds kind of cold-hearted. I hope not. To folks who were once actively addicted and no longer are, it's not that unusual to not dwell on the hopeless outcome for the addict. When we did talk of Jeff, most often, we were saying "poor Jeff," but that was for pathos' sake after all. For real, it was (and is) just good to be here, remembering, joking, even texting.
I never did buy the rest of those 28 words.
6:55 AM PT: Thanks, for Rescuing, Rangers.