 |
MR. MONASTERY Pourin' a Sip
By C.J. Smith
|
|
| IT STARTED OFF SO INNOCENTLY. I check my voicemail and there was a message from my old roommate in college. I hadn’t heard from him in almost three years. It was so typical him—not ‘hey, haven’t heard from ya, how ya doin’,’ what not. Just the following: “It’s me…my number is ***-***-**** give me a call. I laughed, thinking it was a good thing he hadn’t changed any. I was in a rush, so I had to wait on the return call. I had a meeting and social to attend which ended somewhere around 10 pm. I went upstairs. I loafed, and wondered why he had called. I figured the most likely scenario was that he was coming to New York and wanted to grab a bit to eat together or maybe even needed a place to crash. My hunches could not have been more off the mark. He picks up on the second ring. I’m all like, ‘hey slice nice to hear from ya, what’s happenin’?’ He just says: “Garrett’s dead.” Garrett was another of our roommates. Senior year there were six of us: Garrett, Michael (the one who called), myself, and the other three amigos. Apparently G as his was known to all us was riding his bike (a favorite past time—he even completed an Iron Man), and was killed by an oncoming truck. It must have been pretty brutal; he died instantaneously. If I understood Michael right they didn’t let his wife see the body—dental records kinda stuff. This was a few weeks ago. I was leaving for Mexico in two days when I talked to Mike. It was highly unlikely I could have got back to Ohio for the funeral even if it weren’t for the trip. The last time I saw Garrett was at his wedding. I did the pre-eating blessing, saying a prayer for a long and fruitful union. They were high school sweethearts—I never knew him without her. I haven’t heard how everything has played out—was the driver drunk? Was he charged with vehicular homicide? Was it purely accidental or was someone at fault? In the old days I would have racked my brain, yelling at the sky wondering how God could have let such a monstrous thing occur. Sure he was a bit of an asshole. He and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on many issues. In fact once he and I almost went toe-to-toe, which in retrospect was 85% my fault anyway. The only thing that really quelled the beef at the moment was the fact that he had just got out of the shower and didn’t want to fight in his towel, Greco-Roman style. Good thing for CJ ‘cause he would mopped the floor with me. Plus, he was a bit egocentric. Too often I felt him cling to his girl out of fear, all the while he put up this front of having it all together. But then again he was 20 years old! On the other hand, he was responsible enough to finish college with a degree in physics engineering in 3 years, magna cum laude, get married, and land a job with the Naval Department. I thought back to the fun times we had together. There was the time that we purchased a $30 sofa for Michael on his birthday. G’s girlfriend had his truck, and we were riding in her little Corolla or something. We decided to tie it on the roof of the car, but we didn’t have any rope. So we conned the Salvation Army people into giving us a bunch of neckties for $10 and made due. When Michael moved out for the summer, we took that couch to G’s aunt’s place. I sat on the couch in the bed of the truck reading a newspaper, smiling and waving at the confused on-lookers, while Michael was attempting to learn to drive a stick in the front seat, G coaching him the whole time. But those old days are no longer days. There is such a fine line between equanimity and cynicism. I want to say my reaction was the former. I hope it was. Whatever the motivation I can no longer find myself sad in the face of death. I’ve been to some really horrible funerals. Witness: a six year girl who drowned when I was living in Micronesia, complete with women who wailed old-school and beat their breasts outside; a 17 year old Chicana gangsta murdered while 8 months pregnant—you could still see the hump from her stomach which hung outside the opened casket; a young African American man who committed suicide as the police were rushing into his apartment to arrest him for the murder of his girlfriend. G’s death was tragic. In an absolute sense, his entrails and vital fluids careening through the cool Carolinian morning air were as much the perfect manifestation of the divine, as his moments of ecstatic lovemaking with his (now widowed at 26) love. Relatively speaking, any words sound trite and cliché-ish. And just sad—that’s all. I miss him. I don’t know if I ever would have heard from or even saw him again. Still, I miss him. My favorite cinematic depiction of God was Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty. He was calm, smiling, yet worn with cares and concerns. Still he simply made his way, sweeping up the dirt, quietly and humbly attending to his task. I imagine God or one of her angels just sitting on the side of his broken body, wiping away the destruction of existence like a Pieta. Philosophically and spiritually as we move towards this post-metaphysical, co-creative, 2nd-tier framework, the question of life after death is becoming a bit passé. I understand that the major emphasis (as it should be) of our endeavors is going to be personal transformation in the here and now, realizing the always-already condition One Taste of our primordial being in this precious human incarnation. Is there some other life after the demise of this one? Of course we can’t prove it, but I believe in something like it anyway. I don’t know if it’s a resurrection, reincarnation, purgatory, all of the above, none of the above. Who really cares, in a sense it’s all the same. Whatever it is, wherever it is, he’s there. Not the Garrett who died at 25, loved his family, did well in school, sucked at Super Mario Kart, befriended me, and all the rest. Rather a subtle contraction, a soul untouched by the vicissitudes of spatio-temporality, wandering throughout the other shore, looking for his home. I hope he finds it. I hope he looks down on the rest of us poor schleps with some mercy in the meantime. Farewell brotha—take care my friend. CJ |
||
| C.J. Smith is a young seminarian in the Roman Catholic Church. A devout fan of hip-hop, he once organized a pilgrimage to the important Detroit landmarks in the life of rap artist Eminem. He resides in New York. |
©2003-2004 The Manifest E-Zine