1,000 Words
Your picture still sits on my dresser. Somewhere close to the alarm. There is a digital readout in the corner marking the date. Freezing it in time. Freezing you in time. May 5th, 1999. 7 days before your last birthday. Standing next to your new car. Your birthday present.
There are times when I find myself staring at it. I see it like a movie. Suddenly, you’re not standing next to the car, smiling. You’re flying through the windshield of it. You’re dying next to it. You’re on the road. You’re ten minutes from home.
That’s what she told me. Your Mother. Crying, on the phone the day after. I still didn’t believe it even as the words were pouring out of her mouth. She said you were only ten minutes from home. That you called her. That you said you were on your way. She just kept repeating that you never made it. You never made it.
At eighteen we’re invincible. We’re on the cusp of adulthood. We’re leaving home. Birds standing on the side of the nest. Ready to fly. Excited, afraid. We’re not dead. Death is so far away it’s foreign. It’s something that happens somewhere else, on another planet. In another world. Never to you. The café you played your last concert at had written about your death. They said, he would have left tomorrow to start college. You would have flown. A new life. One we were both so excited for. Already we had plans. Weekend trips to visit each other’s campuses. We didn’t plan a visit that summer because, why should we? In a few short weeks we’d be one state away from one another. In a few short weeks we’d be on our own. Eighteen and invincible and ready to live.
I came home. I was at a concert. At the top of the stairs my mother was waiting for me. She was in her pajamas, it was late. Dark. My ears still ringing from the music. She looked down at me. She started talking – not sure how to say it. It came out fast. There was an accident. There was an accident and you were dead. Asleep at the wheel in the early hours you should have been in bed.
Jason is dead.
Such a short word. Such an end. There should be more to it than four letters. More to it than one syllable. I should be out of breath when I say it. I couldn’t breath. The sort of choking realization where you burst into a cry too fast for your tears to make it to your eyes. Where you stand motionless, with your hand out, not sure where to put it. It doesn’t really fit in the air. Hanging there, but you can’t seem to place it. How can my hand be there? How can it be in front of me, while you aren’t? It’s then that it hits full force and you can’t think about it because it’s just too large. It’s just too much.
She said you tried to correct the car at the last minute. Six years later and I still can’t wrap my mind or heart around that. Do you even think at that point? Did you have time to realize what was happening? Did you know you were going to die? There on the road? I just have to take that thought and put it aside. Wrap it carefully so it doesn’t seep out and put it on the highest shelf in my mind.
There are times I have to turn away from thinking about you all together. That’s awful, but there are days that I just can’t accept you are gone, and it’s easier not to. My friend. My confident. My Jason. Always there when I needed you. There when I had nothing else to call my own. Fourteen is such a horrible age. Nothing really works. Your body hates you and your emotions can’t seem to find a ground. That point in time where you suddenly realize you don’t fit with the friends you’ve had for years. That geographical location is no longer the thing that makes a best friend. But I had my letters. I had my emails. I had you.
The easiest part about being your friend was that I could be whoever I wanted to be. We were just names. Just pen friends, just voices over a phone. There wasn’t a pretense. There wasn’t a history. And we liked each other just fine. Just our words. Testing out our future lives in one another’s eyes. And after a year I think I finally realized that the person I was with you, could be the person I was all of the time. And that’s when I started to find happiness again. Something you don’t know you lost until you stumble back into it again. I could smile and be confident in myself and that was because of you. Maybe I didn’t ever tell you that. And this is the best I can do, writing words to you again. A letter I hope you’ll receive. I’m still heart broken that you’ll never get to see the person I am now. The person you helped to shape and create. But then, your death has chiseled me further.
I hate going to sleep at night feeling a wasted day. I lay there and I think, what have I learned today? What progress have I made? Have I done all that I can to help those in my life that need me? I wonder if those thoughts would still float to the forefront of my mind if I didn’t know you weren’t looking down at me. From wherever you are. From that frame.
Your picture still sits on my dresser. Every morning, an alarm. A wake up. A reminder to move forward. That I and all those who’s lives you touched have to live a little more each day in your place.
Much Love.
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