If I go through those hospital doors again like it was the first time do you promise to wake up? I guess by the time we got there you were already gone it was just so hard for us to let go. Maybe if I blamed you it would make it easier on my heart but the reality is that everybody who knew you had a small hand to play. I can’t deny the anger I feel towards your ex and the way she played you out in the last months. In fact I can’t even type these words without the flood gates breaking and the anger taking seed. Standing from the sidelines and being a woman I knew the game she was trying to play. Trying to warn you of that though, should I have tried? Any time I tried to be your friend you thought I was hitting on you. I think that was the drugs talking to you making you see something that wasn’t there. My love for you grew because you were my husband’s childhood friend and you were one of the last ones left.

So here I am standing outside your door listening to the bleeps. That wall of cold air waiting to take me. Please this time open your eyes. I know nobody in this room. You are long gone and there are the people you left trying to hold on. I see your ex sobbing over your bed side now wearing the rings she refused to wear while you were alive. Your sweet angelic mom is there clinging to your life. I smile not because I am happy, I smile because I am scared that I may never be able to smile again. For my husband it was impossible for him to stand by your body while science kept you alive. For me it was impossible to leave because those that were still living needed me more. I rush to your mom’s side and take over holding her hand. That is after I tried to hug all her broken bits back together which was impossible because this time you were truly gone. Watching a loved one succumb to the addiction that threatened to take them so many times before is the most gut wrenching experience.

All I could do was sit and observe everybody’s reactions. Those that felt guilty over their role in your life came to pay their respects and for them I have none. To come and watch a man’s final moments when you were the ones feeding his addictions I can’t even fathom. Some tell me you were finally putting the finally coffin into the relationship with your baby’s momma. Others want me to believe that you were so helplessly in love that you were trying to find the words to win her back. What strikes me the most is the one with his tears that probably sold you the drugs in the first place. The one who last saw you alive and let you walk away in that mental state. He said he had to work but our reality knows that that was a lie. There are pieces missing that we will never know.

Your smile is what I miss most as I look for it in everybody else’s faces. You were just the right of stubbornness but maybe a little too cocky. I never saw you less than perfectly polished and I loved how much you tried to support my crazy goals and life. My one regret is how our son’s will never grow up to be friends like you and my husband. Your wife promised to keep us all in touch but it seems that she me have already shacked up with somebody new. I tried to find your son to hug him one last time but for some reason that gift is not bestowed upon me. Why didn’t you leave him here that day? Is he ok? Is he happy? Is he loved? Do they even talk about you? I am not scared to mention your name like you existed because you did exist to me. Just because your form has changed it hasn’t stopped me from thinking about you. Sometimes I like to think that the blessings coming my way you had a hand in. Sometimes though I like to think that maybe you are just off hitch hiking somewhere trying to do all the right things to keep your family together. I think that is where I get stuck. I know how hard you wanted your family and how hard she was making that for you. I guess that is why she has cut us off from your son because I will always blame her for you.

I feel sick because I know that I could never watch my husband go off and die. If he became in such a state where he was clearly on something I would never leave his side. Not even just my husband but to all the people that I love. From what I hear you were hysterical as she taunting you once again with being a family. I don’t blame you for wanting an escape. I would want that too all things considered. To be your friend in that stairway that night to drop you off at home. The end of the story doesn’t add up. The one I suspect sold you the drugs told us he drove you home (to your mom’s). From there you ran to real home where you phoned his girlfriend and apparently plotted a way to reconcile your family. She tells us that she hears you gurgling into the phone where you lie dying for the next hour until they finally find you. I have seen the messages where you asked another buddy to come over to do the last 3 points of heavy. I saw those messages because they don’t know I know the friend you were going to use with. What can’t be explained is your missing phone and wallet.

I had a year to think about it and I think that maybe I can. When I talked to your friend all he wanted to do was cast blame. Do you know how any times his roommate had to use NARCAN on him? This is what I say to the POS who hovered around his body trying to make sure he wasn’t going to wake up. He knew what he was selling was crap. He knew that the blame would fall into his hands. He went out drinking with him that night and he took him “home”. Where not even one hour later he lay “dying” in his living room. Stripped of his dignity and possessions that should have went to his son. You stole the only pictures that could have reminded his sweet precious boy of life with his father. There is no way I will ever be able to look at you and believe anything you have to say. You stole my friend, a father a son away from us. Your quest to make it rich not only has left you pretty much penniless but soulless as well. If there is anything worth living for I pray that his possessions are returned. I miss my beautiful friend. I miss the ways that he thought he was god’s gift to women even when he was becoming just a shell. I miss the ways that he thought I was cool and worth something even when the rest of the world failed to see my value. I am never going to stop thinking about you or loving you because you existed and you mattered in my life. I hope even now I matter in some way to you too.