Blues For Suzy Q.

Burying Some Of Myself

She was a part of me, silently alone
And too far down to draw the line

-- (Leon Russell, "Me And Baby Jane")

An old friend of mine died Wednesday, an old girlfriend, to be precise. I suppose I am entering that awkward stage when my contemporaries start falling away with increasing regularity. I don’t like it, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Of course, the 800 lb. gorilla in my head is the realization that my time is coming too, sooner or later. I am one of those who never thinks much about his own mortality, and am always very uncomfortable when forced to. Which burying old friends tends to do. But burying old friends who I loved, who I knew in the Biblical sense, I guess you could say – that is a new one.

SQ and I were together off and on for three or four years in our twenties, just before I met my wife. Mostly on; but it was the “offs” which made me realize finally we were not meant to be, at least in the traditional Western Judeo-Christian sense. I was pretty wild, but she was even wilder, and I loved that wildness in her, with great passion. But deep down I knew it was no good for, you know, settling down. We brought out the worst in each other. Suzy knew that, too; and when we finally split up for good, it was more or less by mutual agreement.

After that, I don’t know. . . I drifted for awhile, and then backed into meeting this girl who I ended up marrying and stuff. Blind luck. SQ went her own way romantically and otherwise, and we kept up for awhile. But then she moved off, and I lost track of her. I’d hear things occasionally, from a girlfriend of hers who always told me Suzy and I were destined to be together, in the end. Guess not. Anyway, I remember hearing of her first marriage, kids, and then divorce. And then another marriage. And I saw her a few times, at reunions, her dad’s funeral, etc. And now at her own. We used to talk sometimes about the romance of dying young, when we were fucked up. But it was cancer that got her, in the end. Of all things.

I used to wonder sometimes how it would be if we ever ran into each other later in life, at loose ends. Would we fall back into love? It is so hard to describe, even to oneself, the complicated feelings one has for love lost. I did not love SQ anymore after we split, especially after I met my “true” love. But there was still something there, way down, something residual that I think came from our shared experiences, and shared emotions. I still kept a spot for her in my mind, but the mental picture I carried in later years was obscure and opaque, even to me. I do not think we would have fallen back in love. When an old flame has been dead that long, you would have to actively rekindle it to get any sparks. I wish I could have discussed these feelings with her, or with somebody. But now, no way.

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Nowadays funerals have replaced reunions. I see old friends and distant family at the wakes for other old friends and family more than anywhere else. A strange mixture of melancholy and joy. Sad but happy. Bittersweet. And the overwhelming feeling, once they lower the coffin down into the hole and throw the dirt in, that part of myself is going down with it.

Maybe that is how it is, if you live to be old enough. Little pieces of you get buried with everyone you lose along the way, and by your own last days, there is hardly any of you left at all. In that sense, the ones who get out before then have it better off.

Goodbye, Suzy Q. We shared some times together, good and bad. If it makes you feel any better, I still don’t know what it all means. And I never will.

Our little lives get complicated
It’s a simple thing
Simple as a flower
And that’s a complicated thing.

-- (Love And Rockets, "No New Tales To Tell")

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