By Heather Box
I’ve been to what feels like too many whiskey-drenched nights, filled with shock, loud laughs, tears, subtle nods, and people collapsing in their grief.
The way people work to create a silver lining so immediately after someone dies hurts so bad. In all the deaths I’ve seen, I have yet to find a silver lining thick enough to bring any real comfort. I just wish the person who died would come back. Sometimes I try to bargain with God—If I promise you never to doubt miracles again, will you bring them back? I fantasize about showing up at a party and seeing Maggie, Rachelle, Membema, Mica, Toani, Anne, or Matt there. The list is unfortunately bigger than this, but I can’t even bear to type all their names out. It feels surreal to have so many friends who have died. The only logical explanation is that I have too many friends because I don’t hang out in a specifically dangerous scene like race car drivers or the military or something.
Those whiskey evenings become sweet and sad exchanges of stories untold to the main character. I remember just after Matt died, I was desperate to tell him that the way he made me laugh felt so good. He made me laugh so hard that I felt like I was teetering on insanity. It made me feel like I was going to burst open because my laugh was in too many spots in my body. It was because of how he laughed. Matt was one of those people who was so self-satisfied with his own jokes that mid-joke, he would have to be wiping tears from his own cheeks. So when I was laughing, I never knew what percent was laughing at his joke and what percent was laughing at the amazingness of the human being who cried with laughter at their own jokes. I wanted to tell him that. It felt really important that I share that with him. But he died before I found the words.
See, when he was alive, I got wrapped up in the idea that I didn’t know what to say to Matty or how to help him. He was struggling with addiction, and I thought it might be best if I took a step back and let him get “better.” I thought about picking up the phone and calling him to tell him I love him, but it felt so weird, so strange or out of nowhere. Would I sound dramatic on the phone? Would it make him feel worse? Maybe I should be sending my ideas for which rehab center he should go to or calling his parents and seeing if there are ways I can help? The list of options of action steps became so long and complicated, I always returned to waiting until he got better to tell him I loved him, to tell him that laughing with him was one of my favorite pastimes.
I remember one night after Matt had died; we had all gone out to Matty’s favorite restaurant to each order our own plate of walnut prawns like he always did. At the bar later that night, I noticed Julian, one of Matt’s best friends, was gone. I had been together with Julian for twelve years at the time, so I knew it wasn’t like Julian to wander off without saying anything. I started searching for him inside the bar at first and then around the neighborhood. After 20 minutes, I found him leaning against a pole in the used car lot next door to the bar. The lot was dark, but the moon was shining strong above. As I walked up to him, I gave him one of those nods. From behind the tears, I could barely stand to see falling from Julian’s face, he said, “There is much I wanted to tell him. Mostly I wanted him to know how bad I wanted our kids to go and stay at Uncle Matty’s house someday. He would have been the best uncle there ever was in the world,” he began to laugh. Julian and I didn’t have kids yet, but I think we knew we would.
“Heather, can’t you picture driving up to his house to drop our kids off and seeing eccentric Uncle Matty with his fedora on and sweats pulled up high, ready to greet us? I can imagine the show he would put on for us as soon as we stepped out of the car, embodying some stranger character and making our kids die with laughter. I can picture him holding character until you and I were back in the car and almost feeling weird about leaving our kids there, and then he’d come around to my side of the car and say in his oh-so-serious Matty voice, “I am going to take the best care of those kids. These are Feather Fox and Mr. Jules’ kids—they are as precious to me as they are to you. Call me if you need anything.” Julian finished the story and took a big, deep sigh. “Don’t you want that to happen so bad?” He asked me. “I hope Matt knows that I always thought he would be my future kids’ favorite uncle. Do you think he knows?” I watched Julian turn to the clouds and tell them how much he wanted to make sure Matty knew that.
My broken heart brought me to the ground. I sat in that car lot and told myself I would never again let formalities or my own insecurities get in the way of sharing my love. Awkward or not, I will always find the courage to speak what is true to me and to honor specifically what it is that I love about someone.
Because it is those specifics that become so important. The specifics are what we lose.
Mica – Dancing with you made me feel cooler than I am, significantly.
Rachelle – You should have definitely been David’s girlfriend.
Maggie – I actually think you knew everything I felt about you. Your six-months-to-live gave us that. Those six months changed me forever. Just witnessing the level of courage you lived with through your treatment makes me so much less afraid of anything.
Membea – I knew I was going to meet you before I met you, and that’s why I hugged you so big when I saw you, even though you were a total stranger.
Matty – You’re one of my favorite people to laugh with. I hope you know that.
Anne – The way you welcomed me in like a sister really helped me grow because I realized a new best friend could be made at any moment. (I told everyone that at your funeral, but I don’t think I ever told you that that was the gift that you gave me)
Toani – Singing Little Mermaid with you on the boat in Kiribati was an actual dream come true for this same-town American kid who spent her childhood dreaming about what the other kids who slept in hammocks were doing. And thanks for hosting us in your hammocks.
I’ve told the clouds all this, and I hope they told you.
But for all of us out here with hearts that are still beating, who love people whose hearts are still beating: Fight through the awkwardness—the “we aren’t good enough friends to say this,” the “maybe if I say something it will make him feel weird.” Just say it. Look into their beautiful eyes, grab their hand, and notice that feeling when your two hands are together and say what you want to say clearly.
And say it now, because if they move on from this planet, the clouds are our only messengers, and they can feel so very far away.
Heather Box is an author and storytelling coach based in San Francisco. She is the co-author of How Your Story Sets You Free (Chronicle Books, 2019), which has sold more than 12,000 copies and has been featured in Ms. Magazine, Thrive Global, and HuffPost. Her
work explores grief, motherhood, and connection across distance and time.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 