Is it still a birthday when you're dead?

Your birthday is coming up - February 4, the same day my nephew R was born. R is now 22, and a homeless drug addict. He visits my brother’s house only when my brother is not there, to do laundry. They spent his college education fund on rehab, but it didn’t take. Every time he hits rock bottom he goes back home, contrite, and they welcome him in because what else can they do? The pattern is always the same - after six months the lessons of bottom-dom are lost on him. He starts using again, there is a blow up - sometimes, literally, there are blows - and he is thrown out or storms out, and the cycle begins again. I fear (know) that someday I will get a call, hear a message on my voicemail left while I am sleeping on the other side of the world: R has overdosed, they found him in an abandoned house/under a bridge/in his car. All things that he has survived so far, but probably not for long.

I wonder what the difference is, between R. and me - we both got the addictive gene. Did it come from dad, who drank his way through his 30s and 40s and 50s? Only the diabetes diagnosis made him stop - his fear of dying young, as all other males in his family had, was stronger than his love of beer. For me the addiction took shape in my anorexia, and though I got over being radically underweight, there are aspects to the disease I carry with me still, though they no longer have the power to control my actions, merely haunt my thoughts. For R., it’s hard booze and drugs. It’s strange, compared to dad and me he grew up rich, in the very same suburb that author Jonathan Franzen grew up in - even the same street. He went to a good high school, played lead guitar in a band, was a football player. It’s not that we don’t all know the when and how it went wrong - we do. His mom’s sister, and that sister’s husband, died within a year of each other, which took much of his mom’s time. His dad, my brother, traveled 3 days a week like clockwork. Apparently those twelve days a month without parental presence were enough to send R. off the rails forever. But why? Why did he fall, and so far, while his sister E. rose? She’s the engineer my brother hoped R. would become - R. has the brains for it, but he never applied his intelligence in that direction.

I watch him from afar - we are friends on Facebook. I want so badly to grab him by the scruff of the neck and tell him to stop wasting his life, that he doesn’t have forever to figure it out. That even if he does figure it out there is no guarantee cancer won’t stop out of the wings when he’s 43, as it did with my business partner A., or when he’s 57, as it did with you, making a mockery of the life and peace he’s finally earned after conquering his addiction. He’s so lost, and I don’t know how to help him.

In May it will be three years since you’re gone - the second birthday you’ve missed. My social media feeds will be flooded with pictures of you, and your family. Your kids will look even taller and more composed than last year. Your wife will post a heartbreaking tribute to you. I am so glad to see how well loved you were, and still are.

And me, still out here writing my sad little haikus, sending them out like paper boats on the waves of time. I think about you when I am gardening. How effortless we were together. Thank you for appreciating me, for seeing me as more than just a hottie, for loving my mind, and being proud of my accomplishments I always knew I was lucky to have you; I always felt that I probably didn’t deserve you, but boy was I proud that you loved me. I still am.

I will invite your family to come to Portugal - they may make the trip, especially if Marilyn and Philip come, or your sis or brother and their families. I hope they do. As time passes I feel a longing to connect with people who shared our past, who shared a knowledge and love of you. You were a truly remarkable man, so humble that it was easy for some to overlook just how remarkable, but that didn’t change the facts.

I still listen to all those songs. I remember when you surprised me with tickets to The Cranberries. I was so excited to go, I had a new outfit and everything. Then I had a gallstone attack at work, and had to be rushed to the ER, and have emergency surgery. We missed the concert; what’s more, my brand new convertible was left in the employee parking lot over the course of events, and when I finally got back to it, had a dent. I had it a whole week before some a-hole ruined it, was how I saw it then. I cried inconsolably, and you were so nice about it, but not at all perturbed about the dent. You had much better perspective than I, even then. I wish you could see me now - I am much more sanguine about such things.

I remember how the night of the concert I was sitting up in bed in the hospital after surgery. My sis had bought me a new set of shortie pajamas and a robe from Victoria Secret in a bright pink floral pattern. A few of my employees came to visit, including G. who drove me to the ER from work, babbling “please don’t die on the floor of my car”, pedal to the medal. And you brought a boombox and played '“Dreams” at top volume, and we all sang along.

A few weeks ago me and my h went to Miami to celebrate his mom’s 80th birthday and retirement. She put us up in a nice resort in Key Largo and mid-week we all went for a three hour sail. My brother-in-law Dan was in charge of music, and played Dreams. I sang along, and gradually everyone stopped singing to listen because I was the only one out of the 25 people on the boat who could hit those Dolores O’Riordan high notes. I thought of you as I sang, the wind in my face, the sun sparkling on the ocean, remembering that Dolores is gone now, like you. But for a change, I didn’t cry, I felt only joy in the memory of the last time I sang that song in that hospital room, you sitting at my side, everyone around me falling silent to hear me hit the high notes.