I'm sorry for your loss.

(for A)

The words were so easy to say but the silence that I chose was one of the most difficult things to do.

I didn't like him. And that hardly seemed the point. When you wish someone a happy birthday, it's their birthday and not yours that you wish to be happy. When you tell someone you like their hat, it is their hat that you appreciate. When someone loses a loved one, you goddamn say how sorry you are for their loss. How you feel about them is inconsequential. Someone is in pain. You are watching someone in pain.

If they break their arm, you are sorry that they broke their arm. You may think they are the stupidest person in the world for having climbed that tree, but it remains that the pain they are feeling is theirs.

Unless you aren't sorry.

Perhaps you like that they are in pain. Finally, you think, this should wake them up and make them realize what everyone else was thinking. But they won't. They're in a daze. They may live every day thereafter thinking "Yeah, he was a total fuck," but the moments following a death are not reflective of anything to come. You learned the stages, whether in class or in a film. They're seldom in order, and they aren't yours to arrange.

And who the fuck are you? What do you know? The person gone lived a life you barely saw; the person left behind has every right to continue their love for them, when it was them that saw the other as they truly were.

Say you're sorry.

Say it.

Well, now you've waited. And you seem like a selfish asshole every time you show that you've learned from the mistake of waiting. Every person you now say this to, you think--they think--the press that follows you thinks... "Well, I guess he likes that person more than that other person."

No, no, you write to the editor... I just realized what a fool I was to ignore the pain of someone--I've channeled that into being a better person, really... Please don't think that person 345 is any more deserving than person 204 was.



I'm terrible at this.

And there it is again... I've successfully made it about me.

And I said I didn't like him. I didn't mean that, either.

I did like him. I liked him for you until it looked like he was going to destroy you both. We saw so many people destroyed in our time; why didn't you see it? And he died. And you didn't. And I didn't know how to vocalize "I am so glad you're alive" when someone else had just died. That someone else that I admittedly barely knew and was the world to you; a world to you in a galaxy of crazy shit we had both been through. He was there for you when I wasn't. And when he went away, I still wasn't.

And I hate that every day.

I wish I could say it was a unique situation for me. I don't think I ever properly learned how to deal or grieve. If there is a way. I know I get sad. And if I had the chance, we would've drank some great wine and sobbed and laughed and been witty and provocative with you that night if I could go back.

I'm sorry for your loss.

I do mean it. I remember, days before he died, I think... Jesus, it's been a long enough time ago where a lot of it tends to blur together... that he hit you. Or hurt you in some way. I can't say I really understood how to respond. And it would take a very long time to come to terms with my own interpretation on the complicated feelings of love. You had a serious love as I struggled with my own selfish one. And you didn't deserve to be out there on your own.

I lay flowers on the graves of icons that I have. It doesn't diminish the graves of those I knew personally. I think the celebration of the tragic public figure is a fascinating one. The ones that are closer to reality are harder to celebrate; you just feel so much more for them. I'm learning.

I am ingrained with the fabulous that you are.

Know that I love you, not in spite of, but because of everything.

I am so glad you're still here.

--V