Forgetting But Not Forgotten
not the most uplifting email to send on Christmas
It was 9:08 on Christmas morning when I remembered John Libby and I'm ashamed. I'll explain. I met John in the fall of 2009 — I don't remember the specific instance, cross country practice probably. We were high school freshman. Over the course of your first year of high school, you wade yourself through the hundreds of fresh faces and before you know it you've ambiently arranged a tight-knit group of friends. John was one of those. We'd all sit at the same lunch table every day, played Risk, laughed and yelled, did the homework assignment due next period, took the MUNI up Taraval, created a private Minecraft server, ate at Panda Express in the mall’s food court, played Call of Duty until four in the morning, stole from Safeway, had guns pulled on us by policemen for playing with air soft guns outside Spencer's house, teenage boy activities.
I didn't know he was struggling. I didn't know he was depressed. I didn't know.
It was Christmas Eve 2011. I was sitting on the spot on the couch I'm sitting on right now. We were about to leave for evening mass and my dad apprehensively asked if I knew John Libby. "Of course," I said. "He's one of my best friends." And my dad looked sick, horrified. And then I knew. All of the terrible knowing came at once.
At John's funeral they had these little cards with a picture of him with his birthday and death day. I put one of them in my wallet that day and I never took it out. It stayed in my wallet for 11 years. And then at a music festival last year when I was buying an $18 beer it fell out of my wallet and down between the cracks of these two wooden walls that the beer stand was made out of and I could not fit my hand through to get it out. There was nothing I could do about it. Now it's in a landfill somewhere.
When you're sixteen everything feels like forever. I remember thinking I will never go a day without remembering John — altogether forgetting him was unimaginable. I can't recall when exactly his memory started to fade but this is the first year I went all of Christmas Eve without thinking about John. There were plenty of reminders: I spent the whole day in the house I heard the news, surrounded by the people who surrounded me that night, talked about the high school home to all the awful pressures that convinced him to take his life. But I went all day and night without so much as a glimmer of his memory. And now I am scared, scared that one day I will remember him for the last time, scared that I'll have let him feel alone again.