Thanks for the sign, Clouded Beliefs!!!!
In Loving Memory.... This candle will burn for you...in case you lose your way...I hope you find the light, my friend.
Friends believe that by me writing everything down, and that with the support of those who have never met me RL will help me. Maybe. Sort of sad to think writing this to you with the knowledge that you will never read this is what is keeping me upright at the moment. I am a strong person, but this really sucks. Maybe I am not as strong as I once thought I was. We will see. Dealing with the death of those you love is the ultimate test of survival.
Back in 1996, I started doing a lot of thinking about my childhood and the part you played in it. My sweet and quiet friend who just always seemed to be there. No matter the crowd around me, through their faces I always saw your eyes looking back at me. I remember when we were in elementary school and I first moved into the neighborhood. I saw you and Jeremy...lol. You both would see me looking back and would laugh and run away. I couldn't figure out why you all wouldn't play with me. Then you came to my door and gave my dad a note for me. You said I was pretty. LOL... The next day you let me play with you.
After that, the three of us were inseperable. How many hours did we spend on your roof making paper airplanes? Okay...I sucked at making them...you always had to do it for me.
Come to think of it, you always took care of me. When my dad would freak out and I needed to hide...you always snuck me into your basement. You would sit with me in the dark and we talked for hours. My brother would tweak, and then beat my ass, you would clean me up and we would just lay on your floor and NOT speak, you would just hold my hand while cried, never saying a word. You never had to. My face would look like it had been "slapped with a cheese grader" and you would doctor me. Amazing how I can see in every way you were there for me...and I how I was so not there for you.
How dare I think of this all after you had moved away. I remembered you carrying a key chain with an "R" on it when we were kids and I would ask you what it meant. You wouldn't look at me when you answered, "Its my dad first initial...for Roger." I would ask where your dad was and the stories you told were brilliant but not true. God, how you wanted them to be true. Your mom was a fucking head case...hurting you. But I never saw past my self. Of course you would invent a dad....anything to make it all a little more bareable.
I figured it out....Roger Waters was your dad...the one you wanted, who understood what it was like to have a mother like yours.
I am so sorry.
After you went away, as usual, I had screwed up my life as much as possible and couldn't seem to see past the "right now." I didn't concern myself with the future....just did whatever my anger lead me to do. Then, at 16, nearly two years later....you called me. You were back. Remember? I dropped the phone as soon as you told me you were back and raced out to meet you. What a dramatic moment!
You met me half-way and picked me up. Only you could hug with your very soul. You smelled like pine, as always...and had you grown up. 6'5...or close to...with long red/black hair and those "I-know-more-than-people-give-me-credit-for" eyes. We couldn't get enough of talking...catching up. I was just learning to drive and you were laughing at my lack of skill. I kept hitting curbs with every turn.LOL...but you still got back in the car with me. :)
You hated my boyfriend...calling him a "shmuck" every time his name was mentioned and convinced me to get with the man I later married. LOL....was it because he loved Roger Waters and Pink Floyd as well?
Then...once more...I focused on myself...leaving you behind....and the last time I saw you....you were sitting in your front yard watching me. I waved...you waved...and you left for OR the next day....another time I didn't say good-bye.
So....when I remembered this in 1996...I made a decision to find you....I had it mapped out in my head how I was going to tell you how very sorry I was for being so selfish....for not being there for you as you were there for me. How sorry I was for forgetting you....for never saying how much you meant to me. Nobody knew how to find you. But every chance I could...I hunted.
You were unlisted...you were at a new address...you got married and she would be upset if I contacted you...so many walls blocking me. Should I have fought harder?
And in my searches, I never saw the obiturary...I never heard the whispers circling this town about you. It seems people wanted to protect me from knowing. They all wanted me to believe you were alive and happy somewhere. But as fate would have it, your sister was in town...she had no choice but to tell your secret.
You died and have been gone for a long time now. You couldn't live in the sickness whatever deity decided to grace you with, so you ended it all. Now I am mourning, but so long after your death. Another time I didn't get to say good-bye. Another moment where I moved too little too late. Another ending to us.
I have heard people tell me that you are a coward for doing this. They say that You were weak and selfish...."suicide is the most selfish act there is," they say. I must be messed up because I can think of much more selfish acts out there. They have never walked, even a moment in your shoes...never spent a second in your mind. How dare they!
There's this popular belief that life is precious.....but they don't think beyond that idea. I could never do what you did...not just because I want to live....but because the idea of death scares me....I have so much i want to do...places I want to see. I found hope and desire in life. But how can anyone find hope when their entire lives were filled with sickness and darkness....even the people around you were surrounded in infection. Happiness to you, was a myth.
I don't hate your decision. I don't even blame you for it. I respect what you choose to do with the life given to you, and fuck anyone who thinks differently! They never knew you....never cared...and still don't.
Fuck any God who would deal out this hand to you and then punish you for walking away from it!
I love you, my dearest friend, and respect you. I miss you and wish one day we could meet again....just for a moment, so I can tell you how sorry I am. One moment to touch your face and tell you...."I know now..."
I won't get that no matter how many words I put up in this profile...no matter how hard I imagine going back and stopping you. How desperate you must have been....how frantic and how lost! I know you are gone, no matter how much I want it to be different. I only ask for one thing....could you please give me back the piece of me that seems to have gone with you? I really need it.
But for now....with all my heart...I love you, James....and Good-bye. I will never forget you. I am just sorry it took me so long.
JAM Murrow....I hope you find in death what you never got in life.
Yes...Roger was your dad.....
....how is it a little boy can listen to "The Wall" and understand it like you did at such a young age? I remember that was all you listened to! Everytime I came over that would be what was playing in your room. It was like a collage of music. Your middle sister would be listening to Falco, and your oldest sister...who the fuck knows. Monica was weird in all she did.
You would rewind the tape and play it all over again. I usually just tuned it out, never stopped to wonder why you would be playing the same thing...all the time. One of the many signs of your life I missed. There were a lot of those.
I remember when you attempted to play guitar.*wincing* Man, you were bad! LOL... but you were dedicated. And what was it you wanted to play...."Comfortably Numb." There you would be with your key chain and a guitar taller than you trying to play. I never asked how you got the guitar. I didn't find out till later. I am sorry again....another secret of yours...another side of the life your mother gave you I never noticed...never thought about.
Yet....you always noticed when I pulled away. You always noticed when I had to not come out for a while. You always showed up at my window knowing something was wrong. How was that? How was it I never noticed but you did?
Remember when the entire block would play war? We even wrote entire scenarios! Who was good and who was bad...all the way down to why the bad were invading. Too fun. You were always the assassin guy. At ten you could literally sneak up on everyone. That was why we always won not matter what side we were...good or bad...everyone wanted James on their team! You threw a wicked water balloon. :) The wars went on everyday all summer every summer until that year when Andrea's dad died.
I remember that day really vividly. He shot up and over dosed right in front of her. We had her hidden behind us as they brought his body out uncovered and everything. We watched with morbid fascination as they carried him to the ambulance but he was DOA. He had died before even hitting the floor...needle still sticking out of his arm. When that happened, the block seemed to sort of evaporate. Our games...our plays...even our paper airplanes.
I remember you were into everything involving fighting...and blood and gore. Like smoking...you got me into horror, too. My mom wouldn't let me watch it so I would sneak over to your house to watch slashers with you. You had a television show you refused to miss and you know what sucks? I cannot remember what that show was. I do remember that I wouldn't come over on a certain night because your show was on. But my mind is blank on what it was. Those nights were always so boring. Just me and Jeremy hanging out listening to our parents get high in the backyard while we sat in the front doing nothing at all.
I do remember your faith in Christ, and the words written in that worn out Bible of yours. You took that thing everywhere. To be without it was like not getting air for you. You never talked about your faith but it was obvious in how well read the book was....how the pages had been explored so many times they were all but falling out. You loved Jesus....
But I lost my faith long before you...I remember when you asked me when we were 12 or 13 how it was I would turn my back on God. The look on your face when I answered without any care to your feelings what-so-ever..."He forgot me...why would I waste my time on him?"
It was like I slapped you and you looked away from me...changing the subject. But your faith in Him remained for quite a while. I suppose you needed something to hold onto....while I let go and just fell. Then you left for Oregon. You would go away dark and quiet and return sort of alive with color and radiate brilliance in your eyes. But the longer you stayed with your mother...the paler you got...the more lifeless you became. Then I noticed, you no longer carried your Bible. No longer held on to your key chain with both hands. You told me that God picks and chooses His favorites, and people like us were not a part of it. "Jesus was a martyr for his people," you said....but he died for them...not us. You lost your hope and I had no idea what to say about it. I could only sit there and look at your face in this sad state with no words of comfort to give you. I never mourned over my loss of faith...but you mourned the loss of yours...
and mine too.
Who were our heros growing up? Roger waters was yours, of course, but you never talked much about heros. I am not sure I had any either. I think then, none of us ever had much of a figure to look up to. Not you...not me, or Jeremy. Once you lost your faith, you lost your hope as well. I had rage to keep me going, but I think you were too tired to feel. The world had fallen down around you then and that was the very first time you tried to let it all go. I noticed you were gone and when I would go to your house...nobody would answer the door. One day, I was walking to school and found your mother watering the grass....she told me what you had done and that you moved back to OR. I never told you good-bye and as I walked a way...I only thought of that briefly. What a horrible foreshadow to now.
Thank you for this poem, Master Knight....I love you too, my friend.
4U
TAINTED BETS THE HEART BENEATH MY BREAST TAINTED BE THE THOUGHTS WITHIN MY HEAD TAINTED BE THE BLOOD ICING MY VEINS TAINTED IS THE QUESTIONWILL I EVER BE THE SAMETO TOUCH, TO FEEL AM I AFRAID IT CAN BE REAL AM I HAPPY WHERE I AM OR SHALL I BEGIN AGAINIT IS YOU WHO HAS STOOD BY MY SIDE IT IS YOU WHO WILL REMEMBER WHEN I DIE MY FRIEND, MY SISTER IN ARMS IT IS YOU WHO KEPT ME FROM HARMNOW, I CAN LIVE AGAIN AS LONG AS THERE IS YOU IN THE END