I've been struggling with the recent passing of a good friend of mine on multiple fronts. Yes, I suppose this is common with the grieving process, but it feels different this time.
It's said that the grieving process is divided into 5 stages: 1) Denial, 2) Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Depression, and 5) Acceptance. Oddly enough, I've just been going back and forth between stages 2 and 4. I've never been in denial about my friend's passing; don't really believe in a higher power, so it's unlikely I'll attempt to bargain with any alleged entity; and I've accepted his death. So, I just keep going back and forth between depression and anger, anger and depression, sometimes a bizarre mix of the two.
My seemingly unorthodox grieving process has come at odds with others' more traditional means of grieving, and this has made things progressively more difficult for me.
At 19-years-of-age my friend came out as gay, and while he was readily accepted by most people, his parents disowned him as a result. I was there when he was booted from the family. As one of his best friends, and one of the first people he came out to, I was one of his most ardent supporters and sympathizers. I regularly checked on his mental well-being; wrote poems for him to showcase he wasn't alone; sent his folks an anonymous letter, begging them to reconsider disowning their son; etc. Hell, my family even offered to basically adopt him. It never happened, but regardless, let's just say he felt like part of our family, and we did everything we could to provide him love and support.
Ever since my friend came out in the summer of 2000, he struggled with alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, etc. He turned into an addict to numb the pain he felt from being kicked out of his family and to move his presence to a more pleasant alternate reality. I use the term "move" literally, as between May of 1999 and January of 2022 he held 39 residences. Let me repeat that. Over the span of 22.5 years, he lived in 39 difference places, across 10+ cities and 4 states. Common-sense would dictate that this was because he didn't feel like he had found a home, a family, security, nor acceptance. He was kicked out of his biological family, so for 22.5 years, he tried to find one...39 times. Think about that for a moment. I've moved twice over the past 22.5 years. How many times have you changed residences? Three times? Four times? Maybe five or six times? Now imagine moving almost twice a year for 22.5 consecutive years. That was my friend's life.
When I first heard about my friend's passing, of course I was saddened, but felt more anger than anything else. This was because I couldn't help but wonder how my friend's life may have been different had his parents been more loving and accepting from the beginning. I expressed this anger to multiple people, and while most seemed to agree with me on matters, they simply didn't want to hear about it. It even reached a point where I engaged in a fairly heated back-and-forth with a longtime friend. I was told my friend's parents had been more loving and supportive in recent years; that I had things all wrong; that the death was all on my friend's shoulders for his addictions; and I needed to be more respectful of his parents, as they just lost their son.
This forced me to become isolated and reflect on matters. Was I just imagining things? Should I keep quiet? Am I wrong, or at the very least being insensitive?
After thinking things over, I took a step back, a deep breath, and saw the bigger picture. It's easy to immediately sympathize with parents who lost a child, to give into their emotions, etc., but I can't forget the 22.5 years which preceded those tears. A single night of witnessing the pain on a parent's face doesn't negate the pain said parents inflicted upon their now deceased child the previous 22.5 years. Why did my friend initially move far away from home? To feel more accepted. Why did he move 39 times over those 2+ decades? To feel more accepted. Why did he resort to sex, drugs, and alcoholism? Because he didn't feel accepted. Maybe his mother had become more accepting, or at least more tolerable towards him over the past few years, but his father never did; he continued to move from place to place; and continued to excessively consume unhealthy substances.
My friend's parents are claiming their son died from a "medical thing" (Vague much?), even though the autopsy results have yet to be released. Their written obituary for him possessed less feeling than Ralphie's tongue in THAT scene from "A Christmas Story." I received I don't know how many complaints about it; how it hurt them to read something written about our dear old friend with nothing but family information, a blank picture, and a misspelled city name of where the funeral was to be held.
The vagueness seems to be enough to a lot of people, though. They're okay with not knowing the full truth, for they've painted their own picture of the situation in their minds, and don't want that to be distorted to any degree. They only want to remember the smiles, the laughs, the good times. While I'd understand that in most scenarios - especially for older friends and relatives, I have a difficult time accepting that here. Our friend died at just 41 years old. He was just in the middle of his life. Unlike most people, though, the first half of his life was spent trying to accept himself and the latter half was spent trying to win back the approval of his parents. To me it's selfish for those who knew and loved him to sit back and pretend his parents weren't at fault in his downward spiral; that he was solely to blame; and his life was nothing but rainbows and roses. As a friend who was there for him since the beginning, I feel it's my duty to uncover the truth. I've requested the autopsy results and won't stop investigating until I find out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. My friend deserves at least that. He deserved far better in life, and deserves the world finding out the truth about his life.
I get the common courtesy of respecting the parents of a lost child, but why should we feel obligated to show more respect to said parents than they showed to their child? If a parent disowns their child; the child goes down a dark path as a result; and only toward the end does the parent try to reestablish a relationship with the child again, does the parent really deserve our respect? Are they not essentially the reason the child ended up the way he/she did? I can't help but feel some sympathy for my friend's mother, because I have a hunch she was verbally abused by his father; was fearful of confronting him about disowning their son; and tried being there for him as much as she could - especially over the past few years. If that is true, and she feels genuinely guilty about her son's death, then I can't help but partially feel for her. That guilt she may feel now, though; the tears she may shed don't erase the pain her son felt ever since he came out to her and her husband; was disowned; and constantly searched for a home, a family over the next 22.5 years, until his passing.
In the end, I could very well be alone in my search for the truth of my friend's passing. I may be the only one who genuinely cares to know the whole story. Days, weeks, months, years from now, I could be the only one attempting to spread the truth of my friend's life and death. Even if this is the case, that's okay with me. My friend felt alone for most of his life, wondering if he'd ever find a stable, secure, accepting home. Me being alone in attempting to share his story is nothing compared to what he had to endure. Some people may not be able to handle the truth, and that's fine, but I will not allow Brian's life to be told as a lie.
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