C I P R I A N I

My friend passed away yesterday. I had been working on a new project for about ten years and was thinking about him quite a bit as I was finishing it. I was looking forward to sending it to him and when I finally finished, I picked up my phone to reach out to him and as I was about to call him, I received a message that he had died.

I am physically unnerved. The man was full of energy – full of life. He had gotten older – we had gotten older. We had known each other for over a quarter of a century. He wasn’t just a friend. He wasn’t just a good friend. He was someone that you confide in, that you trust…

And that’s about where I stopped.

I honestly can’t vouch for the second paragraph. I know I seized up after the first paragraph. It’s been seven weeks, by the way. As I write this evening, August 24th, my friend Jamie Neese passed away on July 7th.

And in case you’re wondering, as I typed his name I got choked up again. I had to stop. But at least now it’s still August 24th.

I don’t know about you, and I can’t say if this has been amplified as I’ve gotten older, but each death I encounter makes me revisit the ones that have come before. In my case, the father of my best friends, who was my junior high art teacher, one of my oldest and dearest friends I’d know since 2nd grade, an old boss, my high school football coach, and of course, my father are among the more recently departed – not to mention Tom Petty, Prince, and of, course Jamie.

Jamie’s gift was that he was like this kind of “Greatest Hits Album” kind of a friend. I’ve been fortunate enough to have met some amazing people and I’ve been blessed with very close friends that I’ve been able to keep in contact with my entire life and while we meet people later in life and say “I’ve felt that I knew him my whole life”, Jamie had an extra dimension to that.

Jamie didn’t have quite a decade on me, but he’d reached 60 last year – Yeah, too fucking young –

I’m still in “anger” by the way.

“Shock” sucks. I’m still feeling that. And if I’m being honest, I’m still a little in shock from the other recently departed I’ve mentioned.

And if I may, I think maybe my favorite of the “stages of death” is denial. I’ve both consciously and unconsciously had vivid encounters with this one. I still fondly remember the dream I had shortly after my dad passed away and he was back, also in disbelief that he’d passed away, going so far as joking about how he died. And the other night I dreamed I was out with Jamie and a few other folks that made it feel that much more authentic.

And then you wake up and wish you were still asleep.

Dreams aside, I don’t know why, but after the initial shock wears off (and this has been a pattern) I start to think of reasons why the deceased would want to fake their own death. I then extrapolate and elaborate, sometimes for days. I’m not kidding. I imagine them living on an island, hiding out. And then one day, they come back and some of us are initially upset – but damnit, we’re so glad to see them.

And then I get angry.

Not “throw furniture at the walls” or even “scream to high heaven” angry. I just suddenly get hit with this pang – like most recently, I heard the Doobie Brothers and in a slightly raised voice I say “God damnit!” because I’m thinking of Jamie. He used a Doobie Brothers song in a short film he made a long time ago – it’s not even the same song. It’s just that small connective tissue that triggers a memory and I think “I should call so and so…”

And that thing that used to remind you to touch base with someone now instantly reminds you that you can’t. And you get angry. Then I calm down and just get sad – depressed. And that one seems to linger on and carry the same ripples as the shock from previous deaths – so when you’re older you wind up carrying a small cloud, or perhaps a perfect storm of shock and depression.

Or at least I do. Just sometimes, fortunately.

But it gets exhausting.

But as I’ve gotten older, I try to shift my mind toward gratitude. I was lucky to know Jamie. His Celebration of Life was a few weeks ago. It was hard for all of us. His wife and daughter were there, surrounded by friends and these celebrations are good. This celebration was good. It was so good that we all would have liked to have had Jamie there. And he was – that Spirit – and I won’t try to soften this with platitudes. But there’s no question that Jamie has a spirit.

I have a lot of questions. If you know me, you know I have questions.

The shock of all this comes from Jamie being one of the more alive people I’ve ever met. Even scientists confirm that the aforementioned energy he was full of doesn’t just disappear. And each time I write a sentence, say his name, think about him – for a moment – it’s my memory, his spirit, your semantics.

And I’m sad at first. But if I shift it, and catch that anger of my clinging to a want, and release that and just focus on that moment, the memory – the sound of his voice, the look on his face, the laughter – Goddamnit, the guy still comes right into the mind’s eye – for just a flicker. Just a moment. And I think – it’s just my mind. But I hope it’s something more. With everyone that’s ever departed.

I think of late nights long ago – because I am old. I don’t “feel” old. And now I’m starting to think of all the people that I thought were “old” when I was a child and realize only now how young they must have all felt.

But some 25 years ago, I was still going out on Friday nights. I would go to the bar down the street with friends and as fortune favored at the time, Jamie lived about a block away. So we’d walk home after the bar closed and before I went inside, he and I would talk in the parking lot about just about everything for hours.

One night at the bar, a few days after 9/11, we met a girl whose boyfriend had just enlisted in the military. We didn’t know her. She was so nervous. We were nervous. We all were talking about what had just happened. I don’t remember what we said exactly – but I can see Jamie sitting across from me. For a brief moment, a few days after 9/11 – shy on specifics but that fleeting moment – I can see that. We just happened to talk to this person – mainly because Jamie was such an outgoing person. The kind of person that knew all the waiters and bartenders by name. The kind of person that people were happy to see when he came through the door.

But what’s really strange about that night 25 years ago is that as outgoing as Jamie was, his wife was probably in the bar that night. They just hadn’t met yet. The two eventually met many years later and later found out that they had been hanging out in the same bar, just on opposite sides, for years. We went to that bar a lot. A lot.

I don’t know why things happen when they do. Some years after my father passed away, I saw a very good friend of his in a bar in my hometown. He told me he had recently been to the cemetery to visit my dad. He said he actually goes out and visits him a lot. He really misses him. He said almost, in disbelief – “I visit him more than my dad. That’s weird.”

It’s not.

I miss my friend. It occurs to me that I’ve known him for nearly 30 years. That’s a gift. A friend of mine had mentioned at the Celebration of Life that one of the many cool things about Jamie was that he had seen all the bands we wish that we had in their prime. He saw Billy Joel before the “Greatest Hits” tours. And Journey – with Steve Perry – and just about everyone else. In their prime. And that’s the thing – that other dimension to feeling like “I’d known Jamie my whole life”.

He was like, as my wife put it, one of the “Big Kids” – Like when you’re in 2nd grade and you know some seniors in high school. Which, had we grown up in the same town, that may have been the case. So in a weird way, it was like “I knew ‘of’ him my whole life.” I’m not sure if that makes much sense.

Memory is a strange thing – but I have probably a bad habit, of “remembering” times I wasn’t necessarily a part of. Or should I say, imagining being older (or younger) at a certain time in my life when I was alive.

For example, it would have been cool to be in high school in early 80s. Yes, I was alive and remember that time, but Jamie was a connection to an imagined memory of what it was like being a little older.

But we were basically the same “age” – whatever that is nowadays.

He was too young. Terrifyingly so.

I am grateful for the friendship and cherish the memories – it’s not a substitute for one more conversation, one more beer, but it’s something. And there’s a lot of something. And that makes me hopeful. I don’t know where he is but prefer to hope he’s somewhere. With everyone else. And damnit I’ll be so glad to see them.