A Letter To My First Friend
Dear Ryan,
We met when I was 2 years old. You were 1. Of course neither of us remember the moment. That’s just what our parents told us. The first photo we have of the two of us together is your third birthday. I would turn 4 just a few days later. I look at that picture and I see all the paths ahead of us. Until this past week, I would never have guessed this is where our paths would lead. I still can’t believe it.
At the time of that first photo, you lived just a few minutes away. Our dads both worked at the VA hospital, and our sisters were a year apart too. So it made all the sense in the world that our parents brought us together.
I don’t have many memories before I was 5 or 6 years old, but there are little glimpses. You had a GI Joe tank, and we were playing with it at the top of the stairs of your house. Little spring-propelled missiles launching a few inches and then *boom!* we scatter the action figures as we imagine the explosion throwing them across the room.
Your family moved a few times though, so through elementary school we saw less of each other as you moved to anther school. Our closest friends shifted to be the other kids in our classes. But we stayed in touch as our families would get together. It was mostly the big stuff when our parents put time into planning, like holidays and birthdays.
I was 12 when our friendship rescued me. In 5th grade, I felt like I was on top of the world. I was student body president and I felt like I was friends with every kid in school. Then 6th grade washed over me like a tidal wave.
Middle school is a special kind of hell for kids who hit puberty late. Suddenly my best friends didn’t want to spend time with me. I was at the birthday party of a kid who I considered my best friend at the time. I’m sure his parents had told my parents about the party. When I got there, I was asked, “who told you that you were invited?” I hadn’t realized there was anything amiss in the friendship until that point. Then, suddenly, it was gone.
But nothing had changed between us. We still had our friendship, and suddenly I selfishly needed your camaraderie. We were together most weekends. Along with our friends Nathan (from my school) and Daniel (from your school), we formed a little crew. We rotated through the homes on weekends, playing Magic the Gathering, D&D, and watching movies. The summer of 1997, Daniel and Nathan were away at various times and we practically lived together. Both maxing out the 99 hour play clock on Final Fantasy VII on your PlayStation and listening to Third Eye Blind & Offspring. I think it was that same summer we applied non-waterproof sun screen before a day at a water park and got sunburned so bad we both had blisters.
From then on, it feels like we were inseparable despite living an hour away from each other, and our schools being even further apart. It was like we were family. One year, you came to Thanksgiving at my grandmother’s house in Brownfield, Texas. I loved my Mema, but Brownfield isn’t exactly the most exciting place in the world. Together we made it a great adventure, scrambling up every tree and making new games out of the same old toys I had played with every year when I visited.
As we started to drive, which was possible at just 15 years old in New Mexico at the time, the distance decreased. I came to your high school theatre productions, where you were doing lights and sound. You came to mine, it seems like you were always there opening night. It wasn’t long before our friend groups were thoroughly mixed. You started dating one of my best friends, Jill. Her parents couldn’t know though, so I became a persistent third wheel. I can’t say I was bothered though. We always had fun.
We couldn’t get enough free time together, so we’d find each other at work. You came to Circuit City and played video games so often that my manager told me that my friends had better stop coming around. I visited you and Daniel at Zip Lube and would hang out until the next car pulled in for a oil change.
We saw our paths diverging though. I was heading off to college on the east coast and you’d be staying in New Mexico. Our last New Years together we drove out to the middle of nowhere and talked the night away. We came back to my house just in time to walk out into my back yard and watch the sunrise with my mum. Perhaps it was the same year that we went to cut a Christmas tree and hauled back an absolute monster that wouldn’t fit in my house.
The summer after graduating high school I feel like I discovered a layer to you that somehow had remained hidden. We took a road trip to southern Colorado, where our friend Kim’s family had a house. We spent the days running around the woods (after a picnic one day, you actually ran around to the other side of lake for fun) and staying up too late watching movies. One of the movies in the house was Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I’d never seen. You were horrified at my ignorance and innocence, and we watched it with you singing along nearly the whole time. 6 years later, I’d still only seen Rocky Horror that one time. I was back in Albuquerque for my theatre teacher’s retirement. As theatre kids do, we ended up doing karaoke. You insisted I join you to sing Time Warp. I’m sorry for making such a mess of it.
When I came back from college for visits, we savored the time together, even if being a bit stupid at times. Like the time you, Daniel, and I went camping in the dead of winter. It felt like for half the hike we were walking across ice and we had a hard time getting fresh water, resorting to melting ice on the camp stove and try to crack through the ice on the thoroughly frozen lake. As I recall, we were smart enough to cut the trip short.
The start of our greatest summer together was the trip to Las Vegas. Your parents, just 1 year separated at that point, came together to give you a chance to drive an F1 car. I joined the tense family trip so we could find whatever underage fun we could in sin city. We must have gone into every store in the strip. Bless the clerk at DKNY who let us take over a private dressing room for an hour and play dress-up in clothes we could never afford.
The rest of that summer was just perfect. Doing about 4 hours of landscaping each day at my parents’ friends’ house, and then just hanging out the rest of day. Tinkering with our cars. Going to bad concerts, Matchbox 20 and Sugar Ray double headliner sticks out as a painful one. Dressing up for the first showing of Pirates of the Caribbean. Learning to use turntables. The start of your relationship with Dea, 10 years before you two would finally get married. It was the same summer that I spent plenty of time on AIM flirting with Ilana, now my partner.
There was something special about that summer, and I think everyone knew the bond between us was extraordinary. My college friends certainly did. They showed it when they flew you out to Boston to surprise me for my birthday the following year. That truly was a heart-stopping surprise.
After university, we saw less of each other. We stayed in touch through hand written letters on top of the normal Facebook and emails. The times we had together were good fun, like the Time Warp karaoke night. Or the time you took Nathan and me rock climbing in the summer of 2010. You were always such a natural athlete. That was a great time, and also the last time we got together as a group with Daniel and Nathan too.
One of the warmest moments of friendship came a few years later at your wedding. At the bachelor party, we were the last two at the end of the night. We were sitting at the bar, each sipping a double Cragganmore. You told me you were glad that I was there with you at the end of the night. I wish I could go back to that night now and just keep soaking in the moment as the bar emptied and we reminisced about childhood and how far we’d come.
But I can’t. The night of your wedding, as we danced around, was the last time we ever had together.
Your sister called me last week. I knew before her first word that something terrible had happened. I don’t know what happened. I still can’t comprehend it. I’m writing you this letter to remember and see if tracing my memories of you helps make a clearer picture of how your story ended like this. But as I type this, I feel I understand less. You were such a kind and peaceful soul.
It’s a vain form of grief to imagine one could have made a difference after someone takes their own life. I know I couldn’t have. But I still wish I had been there more. Mostly because I wish for more of our friendship, and the only place that exists is in the past. I wish I had been in better touch those last few years. I can’t go back and share more joy together. I’m going to miss you for the rest of my life. You were my first friend. I’ll miss you like hell.
With love and grief,
Weldon
