Dear Jerod.
It was just a few months ago. I had called you and told you all about Scott, Grandy, Peaches and Adam and I said to you over and over again; “Don’t ever die. Please don’t ever die. Aside from the fact that so many people obviously adore you I’ve lost so many people this year and I can’t do it again, especially not with you.” You swore you wouldn’t. That I wouldn’t have to find it within myself to make yet another grief-stricken Facebook post for someone who wouldn’t be able to read my words because it was too late.
And yet here we are. Inexplicably, and with no answers, here we are.
There are so many words I can think of that end to describe this feeling. Devastated. Eviscerated. But I think the most appropriate comes directly from your username that popped onto my screen and into my life a decade ago on the Something Awful forums – defenestrated.
I feel like I have been thrown from a fucking window, Jerod.
I was scrolling idly through Facebook on my break, at the funeral home job you were referencing only a couple of days ago, and the cruelest thing happened. The same algorithms that enabled us the bridge distances between New Zealand/Australia/Pennsylvania/Arizona now threw up posts about your caustic, inimitable flame being extinguished. And I felt myself break through the window on the highest floor and start falling, plummeting toward this all-to-familiar feeling of having my heart suddenly and brutally cauterised. The sun is shining as I fall, wreathed in the twinkling shards of the glass I just burst through, and I can’t tell if it is blood or tears that are falling with me but in these instances they are all the same.
You always “got” me. I can be a difficult, stubborn person but you got that and even when we fell out once you were the one to mend the break with a few choice words. No matter what happened in our lives, the other person could usually be counted upon for a fitting industrial song selection (you ALWAYS had the better ones), a resounding bitch-fest or just the quiet solidarity that came from so many years of friends supporting each other through shit and sugar.
I can’t remember if I told you, but I am so proud of you. Despite any struggles, and despite the trials and tribulations that came your way, you just wanted to love and be loved (I know that I am ruining your crunchy rivethead visage by saying that but I didn’t even want to be writing this so you can just sit down and shut up pal). And you got that, in spades. You so adored Angeline. It was evident in any conversation – your voice would practically glitter speaking about your wife, and you loved the kiddo so, so much. And it made me so very happy to hear that love just blanketing your voice. Every fibre in my being is breaking with grief for them, your family and anyone who loved you and had the blessed opportunity to know you in person.
Despite having ours paths geographically running parallel many times, we never quite managed to bridge that gap – came close a few times, but damned if we aren’t just two broke industrial nerds and your country is ridiculously inhumanly large and I live on an island on the butthole of the planet. Thank god for the internet, huh? It cuts me to absolute ribbons that I cannot come and say goodbye, that I don’t have photos of us. I dont have any of the usual accoutrements that the grieving cling to in order to make their goodbyes, and it is the loneliest place to be when you are desperately trying to keep your head above water in the raging sea of the newly bereaved. But what I do have are hard drives full of music and chat logs and they are proof fucking positive that you were here, you were my friend, and you gave a fuck and I couldn’t ask for anything more. (Lies. I would ask for much more, mostly that this wasn’t happening.)
When you were sad I would draw pictures for you to cheer you up and I said I wanted to draw a funny one for you instead of always feeling like a Debbie Downer. We would joke about how if we finally did get to meet up what would be the awkwardest places to do so, it was going to be a series....I was saving this for your birthday.
You brilliant fucking bastard. Another piece of my soul has gone and I can’t ever get it back. There are very few people on this Earth who I would gladly take a bullet/sell my kidney for, but you were one of them. I guess I just have to be thrown from a window instead.
Love always, your dipshit Kiwi friend Binky in the colonies.
