YOUR DEATH AND THE BREVITY OF BEAUTY AND WE LIVE ON FOREVER

02/05/25

I’m not going to share your name.

The beauty of this page and music and all related isn’t the temporal glory or accolades that never deliver like you imagined they might. Sometimes it all feels like exit ramps you pass in the middle of the night, through winding, upstate desert highway somewhere… slapping your face periodically in pure desperation to stay awake… leaning into faith’s shoulder a little too hard and landing at some arbitrary hotel for five hours of rest before the hustle gets too restless again. And its always does. I heard years ago that Harriet Wheeler from The Sundays retired to garden and peace after the “Summertime” single afforded her that. Ann Demeulemeester too. Likely idealized but without the goal of romance and vines growing wildly toward heaven, away from the dirt, what else do we even have? It all sounds beautiful and I wonder if ever fortunate enough to touch people that way… if I could even enjoy the gift of peace and the serenity of tending to it. I like to think so. This is all to write about your passing. It’s 5:10 am and I’m listening to the self titled Cerberus Shoal album because it’s the most Maine band of all time and I’m putting myself there for the time being. The coast is clear. It’s beautiful but so cold.

On December 26th I received an email from you, through this substack page, and you said you wanted to send me some of your 7” records because your brain cancer was back and they needed to go. You sent some photos of the records… ones that I have or had… mostly from my high school and early hardcore years. We shared similar tastes and since you picked them up used in Maine, there was a chance that some of them could have even been mine before. You sent some photos of records and zines I’d signed for you, so I took it that we met briefly at the American Nightmare show at Space Gallery in Portland last year. Over the years I’ve received a lot of emails and strange requests… some joyous and sincere and some scary and violent. I’ve made lifelong friends and have been granted three restraining orders. You kind of just have to go with your gut and hope the good outweighs the deranged. Your tone was different though… genuine and without condition. I wrote you back and talked about the records… how I had several of them and sold them through my distro, which I kept in my second locker in high school… convincing people that they needed a Blood For Blood or Torn Apart 7” more than lunch that day. It seemed true.

You mailed a few records you loved from your coast to mine. It seemed important to you that I have them and so I said I’d house them for you for the time being. They arrived at the store while we were evacuated from the fires. In your condition, which I knew very little about, you wrote to me concerned for our safety and our home. That you cared enough to ask us how we were while you were in such heightened and serious trouble spoke volumes to me. I have ‘close’ friends who never reached out, now or at other life milestones… people I sat around… month upon month… in speeding unregistered vehicles… playing music around the world… in what you’d suspect would bond you for life… but instead often dements to some broken, abandoned resort in the corner of their mind that writhes in salt and bitterness. That’s the complexity of the simpleton… So it meant something when you sent well wishes. We sent a few letters back and forth and on January 13th when I asked how you were really doing you wrote:

I obviously don't feel great i havent in awhile anyways but I'm not having the head pain that I've felt before yet. A law recently passed where I can drink some liquid that will put me to sleep in 10 minutes and I can die in my sleep. I won't have it for another couple weeks but I plan on doing that soon after I get it. hopefully before I start feeling it but it has grown double in size so I dont know. I just turned 35 and I've known that I had this since I turned 21, I'm glad I stuck around for awhile. My neice doesn't know yet who is also my best friend she's only 10 that bothers me the most.

We sent more letters and talked about music and I made you laugh and I hope that took your mind off of the pain for a minute. After we returned home from evacuation I let you know that I received your package of records and that they arrived safely and asked what was up with you... January 22nd:

I'm doing fine. My doctor told me it's OK if I don't share with my neice and nephew which is a big relief for me. I think it would have been the worst day of my life if I did. I'm being well taken care of with hospice and all so I'm not worried there they give you everything you might need so you don't need to call them for it. I haven't had much head pain. They put me on lorazapan which has helped but has side effects I dont care much for. I'm supposed to go on february 1, before all of that stuff starts happening like it did when I was 20 into 21 when I had my surgery/chemo/radiation. They said they could operate and give me chemo again but I was fine with that even though I'm surprised i lasted this long from the first time around. Life is fuckin crazy man. I wish you the best.

On January 29th I wrote to you:

I received no reply to this letter and wondered where you were at… if February 1st was your time as you’d said it’d be… if you had waited or if you were at peace. Last night, February 4th, around 6:30pm in Los Angeles, I mentioned to Amy that I hadn’t heard back and we tried looking online for any info or status. She found a phone number. A landline of a house you maybe lived at and I called it. It was almost 10pm on the East Coast and a woman answered. I asked if you were there. She said you were gone. It was your Mother and she saw my name on the caller i.d. and that she knew we’d been in touch and that you were at peace now. She told me that you did receive my last letter… that it was printed out and that you took it with you along with bracelets from your niece when you left your body. And we talked about your being and constitution… the depth of your grace… how life had been hard socially since your diagnosis almost fifteen years ago… I can’t even imagine… and how your father had recently passed and the weight of that on you… and it seems so clear that you loved and were loved by your family so much... a backwards gift that others squander in aimless existence… that at 35 you were blessed to have known what real love looked like… immaterial… and that for once in your life you were able to have say over yours, deciding to exit pain and this realm of love with dignity… and how you’d get a kick out of us on the phone together… and how you told your Mother I’d be in your area in a few months and that maybe we could find time to say hello. And I told her that I would do that… and I will. We spoke for thirty some minutes and all I could do after was lie in bed around my family and soak in their love and not take for granted all that we have… simplistic and angelic and complicated and finite… and that is the gift you’ve given to me… and I’m thankful Amy found your home’s phone number… and that you are free… and that you are with your father… all knowing and united with the souls you carried and who carried yours… in some divine kingdom that we only can arrive at after the suffering… and this is an ode to you who did not want an obituary as I understand… so it’s not quite that… but a thank you note. Is it all true? At some point in the conversation, my spine shivered and I could see Amy and I in our living room… Rainer playing his game… puppy prancing… and your Mother on the phone at the same time… all from your vantage point… clearer than before…. resting in sublime peace… free from mortal pain.

Until then…