Continuing the discussion from A letter to him for my 1 year:
It’s soon approaching the one year anniversary of your death and again I’m humming the words to that damn RENT song. I finally called your mom like I said I would. I called her on my one year clean day. It’s strange that it was such a stupid happy day for me and she was the only person I told and celebrated with.
When I heard her voice I choked up and almost hung up like a coward, but I forced myself to say hello, to start that conversation. We both cried. We both talked about how much we missed him. She said how she just couldn’t believe that you were gone, that she had a child die… it almost seemed like a selfish thing to say, like she was only thinking of how it made her appear to the outside, which was a new light to have shined on her for me because I’d always held her in such high regard and respect. She said how hard your dad took it, and how neither of your brothers will talk about you or anything related to losing you. She did tell me a little about how it all happened, erasing the mental imagine my brain had grown. At first it was a relief knowing you were at a friends house and it wasn’t her or your dad that found you. She didn’t give me any more details other than to say that it really bothered her that it all happened right around 11:30pm on the 19th but the EMT’s took you to the hospital and you weren’t officially pronounced dead until after 12, so your death certificate and everything says you died on the 20th. Now that really bothers me too.
We talked for almost an hour, about you, how you were doing when you got back to Iowa. How hard your parents were fighting for you but that you were doing well and they just didn’t see it coming. I think your mom holds part of your downfall on me. I don’t blame her because I do too.
A few nights ago I couldn’t stop thinking about you. For a while after talking with your mom, my curiosity about your death and final day were quelled. But I had to know… who you were with, where… how long were you alone? So I messaged B the guy I knew you’d been working with making runs to Colorado for. When you and I first started talking you told me all about how much he was helping you, giving you free weed to help with the withdrawals, even gave you a car eventually… but then you called me one night and asked if I thought it was a bad idea for you to drive to Colorado to pick up weed for B. I told you fucking not too… but I also knew that your mind was already made up and you were going to do it. This is when I knew you weren’t going to be ok. I never liked the things you said he was doing for you… it all just sounded like he was using you and you were too easily persuaded by the cloud of weed and drugs and booze he allowed you to do while at his house.
Funny thing is that he was C, your little brothers friend… like 6 years younger,… I remember once we were back from college visiting your parents and we went to his house to pick up C and we went in and smoked weed with this like 15yr olds dad. Years later it was that prick who found you purple in the bathroom.
B added me on facebook right after you died and it took everything in me not to blow up and accuse him… because I knew he was involved somehow.
I finally just came to terms with the fact that as usual, your drug dealer was your best friend and messaged him… I just asked him what the last few months were like, what music were you listening too etc. To my surprise he replied back quickly and asked if I was really ready to hear everything a could to talk on the phone… for the next two hours we spoke about you and the ups and downs those few months brought.
He was C’s good friend and C was still away at school when you got back with your mom but he messaged B and said “Kyle’s coming back and I need you to treat him like family and take care of him but absolutely do not let him have any opiates”. And B told me all about helping you through the withdrawals, giving you the weed and suboxone and that you finally were able to do it. He reiterated a lot that I already knew, that he was giving you weed, the car a “job” etc. but then he got into the hard shit… the stuff that I knew I needed to hear but didn’t want to know.
He told me how in love with me you were, and every day you were clean was to get back to me. Your phone til the day you died had photos of me as your background. He said he told you over and over to get over me, move on… and you tried, how tried to go out and meet other girls, but you were too awkward and too smart for them. You’d come home and say every chick is just too dumb and couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation. B said even when you did start to hook up with girls that you’d stop because you couldn’t think of anyone but me. And when you knew for sure I was seeing Someone that it just devastated you.
Not gonna lie that shit killed me. Like pealing off a scab to reveal an open nerve. I knew it was there, it had hurt before but it was suddenly yanked off and poked to expose the pain.
Then he started telling me about how you were never really ok… as soon as you started recovering you were back to stealing from your parents. Drinking way too much. He said that C was soon back from college for the summer and that the two of them spent most of the summer taking care of you and your “don’t give a fuck” attitude. Covering for you when you’d smoke weed in the living room, getting rid of the Jameson bottles you’d leave out in the bedroom. Then he told me that they saved you from an overdose a few weeks before the final one. They found you, exactly like I imagined on your bathroom floor, need still in… works on the marble counter top. They brought you back with narcan your dad kept in the house. Your baby brother would do anything for you… he worshiped the god damn ground you walked on. It hurt to know you overdose multiple times. And then B said what I knew all along… he said everything got worse when I stopped talking to you and blocked you.
The night you died you were at B’s house. He said you had started staying over a lot and even though B was in Colorado on a run you were there.
His dad found you, “already purple” he said, so who knows how the fuck long you were gone. His dad didn’t call 911 he called B… but then he called for help… B tried calling your parents but it was late and they weren’t answering the house phone. He called your brother who was back at college and pissed at B for interrupting his video game. C got a hold of your parents and I guess your dad got there not long after the ambulance… of course they wouldn’t let your dad in but him being a Dr. he asked how long you’d been down and B said your dad just hung his head and said “I need to go get my wife”.
8 other people died that night from the fentanyl laced heroin. Funny thing is that you and I used to joke how great it’d be to get some of that shit. How fucked up is that?!
B asked how I was doing… I told him about my life right now… been clean etc etc. and he said I must have learned everything I needed to do opposite in my life to get my shit together and I laughed… told him about the next guy I dated that almost killed me… how I ran to a guy that was opposite you in every way and ended up with my face bashed in.
The entire time we talked I couldn’t help but cry silently as he was telling me everything. Your death was no longer an imaginary picture being pieced together in my head… it was real, and about as bad as it could have been. You were alone, in a strangers house with someone who was more concerned with cleaning up the paraphernalia than wether your heart was beating or not.
I remember lying on your chest when we’d be in bed… just listening to that heart beat.
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