It was after my friend John was killed that I think I first realized, I mean really realized, just how tenuous everything in life is. All the good things, anyway. Innocence, happiness, love, success. Mine is hardly a unique experience, but after that realization, my final loss of innocence, I never really believed in a “sure thing” again. Or in security. In happy endings, an end to all troubles, sustained success. What I finally really did then, after my friend died, was begin to grow up.
At some point, after one falls from grace, one decides how to live with what one is left with. Or does not decide. Myself, I do not recall ever having made some conscious decision, or having had any epiphany about how I should conduct myself in the aftermath. Rather, I can look back now, thirty years on, and realize that for whatever reason I just kept going, and never truly slipped into cynicism or despair; instead, I began to take each thing as it came, and each person. I began to value laughter and good times, and not take them for granted anymore. I learned how to get by when times were lean, waiting for when the times were good again. Rather than wallowing around thinking about how unfair it all was, I learned that what was most important – above all else – was to just keep moving. When one was always moving one was sometimes alone, even lonely; but better that than sitting around in a slough of despond, just waiting to go under. How I ended going down the path I did, in the manner that I did, I do not really know. Was it an accident? Nature? Nurture? Providence? It was probably some of each.
But I found a way to keep moving, that is the thing. To put it simply, after my friend John died, I began to think like a wolf. Not a lamb.
Oh, and here’s one thing: This guy named Robert, one of the closest friends I had, was sitting on my living room floor one night, basically in a drunken stupor, rocking himself back and forth. He kept mumbling something over and over. At first I ignored him; but then it began to get really annoying, so I moved closer to hear what it was he was saying to himself. He was saying, “Absorb the losses. Absorb the losses.” Over and over again, like a mantra. At the time, I asked him if he would please shut the fuck up, I couldn’t hear the stereo. Later on, sober, I asked him about it. He did not remember the incident at all, or where the phrase he was muttering came from, or why he felt specifically compelled to employ it as an incantation that night, shit-faced, on the floor of my apartment. Who knows? We decided the words probably came to him from God, or at least from one of the Muses. Personally, I think he was facing his demons that night, whatever they were, and it was the only thing he could come up with at the time with which to defend himself.
We laughed about that night and his drunken, nonsense phrase for a long time; but to be honest, I kind of adopted it, and I have used it more than a few times myself over the years. I found that whenever I did, it seemed to ease my burden a little. . . if for no other reason than it brought thoughts of my friend back to me. Absorb the losses, yes.
The death of my friend John was one of those losses I needed to absorb. It was a tough one, I don’t mind saying. It took me awhile to even begin to think about how to go about starting to absorb it. I sometimes think I still have not, entirely.
And then there was my friend Robert. He was one who liked to wade way out, into the deep waters, confident always in his ability to stay afloat. And one day he just got fucking swept away.
The demons got him in the end, I guess. Absorb the losses.
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