Elis, requiescat in pacem

quoted: “drink it all, fuckface” -elis

on monday night my friend elis white died in his sleep. he was 23. 10 years, 7 months and 13 days ago my friend justin ables died in a hunting accident. he was 17.

i never use cuss words or surnames in my blog, but right now i’m feeling it. and i’m feeling nostalgic. thursday night, mr brennan and went to dottie and poppy’s house along with roisin, tab, boris, tony, kate, keats, and twenty other people. we sat. in silence. in laughter. in tears. we sat. and we celebrated el. we remembered him, but it still seems so unreal.

when justin died, the loss was immediate, apparent, devastating. everyone in my life was part of a single community. they knew him. they missed him. they understood why i (and brandon and mike and allison and katie and bekah and everyone else) kept bursting into tears at random moments: one sunday morning, my mother sat on my bed and woke me up. “justin died last night,” she said. and i felt numb. i feel numb now. that day, i had something to do. i went with laurie to find brandon, who was hunting near sprague. there’s nothing for me to do today, and i feel more than a little lost.

since that crisp, clear autumn morning in spokane, i’ve been afraid of the telephone. tuesday night andrew and i were watching persepolis when his phone rang. it was on the vanity table by the door. it was roisin. i went to clip my fingernails while andrew started answering monosyllabicly. and that was that.

some things have been easier this week than they were when justin died. i feel more prepared for my emotions. some things feel more difficult (going to work, for example). and a lot of difficult things have been a bit easier to deal with because of the ready availabilty of whiskey, which definitely wasn’t an option at justin’s death (though i do remember puking up a large volume of doctor pepper alongside kingen the night after his funeral).

i’m keeping a novena for elis. i’m not sure why, but i feel like it might help. there’s a brideshead revisited quote i recall. it’s julia speaking to charles, who just can’t get it: “Do you know last year, when I thought I was going to have a child, I’d decided to have it brought up a Catholic? I hadn’t thought about religion before; I haven’t since; but just at that time, when I was was waiting for the birth, I thought, ‘That’s the one thing I can give her. It doesn’t seem to have done me much good, but my child shall have it.’” it’s done me some good, and so the immortal soul of elis shall have it.

tonight andrew and i went to trash palace with warren and nick and ryan k. to celebrate elis, we bought all the jelly shots. and then we did jaeger bombs. and then we danced with abandon. and it didn’t make us feel any better, but it did distract us for a bit.

on wednesday morning, when i knew, one of the few things i could think coherently was the uselessness of the internet to communicate the only things in life that really matter: births and deaths. the net makes so many things possible, but it seems ill-suited to cope with the big things. and someday, when vint dies, i won’t send his widow an email. i’ll send her a long letter. and that’s okay.

i’m signing off now. and i’m doing so with so much gratefulness. for my friends in london. for my friends from spokane. for my family. for elis. for justin. for so much.

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