One Year and Go Figure... I'm Having a Moment...

So I made it to a year... I have lost over a hundred pound and all that jazz... Do I sound a bit cynical??? Perhaps... Lately I have found that there has always been one person who was my constant and he has been gone three years now.  I miss him every single day and if I could, I would have done everything I could have to take away his pain. There are still times when I pick my phone up absent mindedly to call and tell him something and I can't... I keep on saving the last voicemail that I ever got from him especially for days like this when I am at my weakest physically and emotionally, because even after all this time, it still makes me laugh... and then I cry...

Matt was my best guy friend from the first day I met him in 9th grade until he drank himself to death. Unresolved grief?  You bet!!! He was truly the only person in this world besides my grandmother who was unconditional and nonjudgmental. I have yet to meet anyone else like him.  He was the kind of friend that you could never stay mad at.  He wouldn't let you because you could tell that it hurt him deeply to hurt those around him that he loved. My favorite phrase of his was, "What do you need [fill in the blank] for?  All you need is ME!".... And then grin at me with his toothy, crazy grin and do something else to make me laugh. He was a very special person and was a good person regardless of what people thought by his actions.

What a lot of people don't know is that after my first marriage was over and I came home the first time.  I had the opportunity to see him.  He literally (an imagine a giraffe bounding over to you with a kangaroo bounce) hugged me until I couldn't breath. I couldn't say anything at all, but in that moment was finally able to break down and not feel like I had to be so strong anymore. There are still times where I feel guilty about that because as much as he as my rock, he wouldn't allow anyone else to be his rock when he needed us the most.

There have been days during his journey where I definitely could have used his laugh, a stupid joke, or even his ability to fall without hurting himself.  Unfortunately I don't have those days anymore and frankly I miss them.  I always mark my daughter's birth as literally the week before he died.  I got the call when I was still healing from my C-section and I remember how much I hurt inside and out as I cried.  The  last time I cried like that was when my Grandmother Rosalie died. You see Matt was one of those people that was a true kindred spirit.  The bond we had wasn't a romantic one... It was more like a brother-sister relationship, but even closer than that. But he was tormented...

I guess that even though this is supposed to be a happy milestone, like my daughter, my masters degree, my acceptance into the doctoral program, promotions etc.  I still, after three years, go to share my excited news with him. And I can't.... I honestly don't think that I will ever recover fully from the fact that he died from acute blood alcohol poisoning.  I also still feel incredible guilt at the fact that he died alone and didn't reach out OR even as much as it hurts me to say this, to stop doing stupid crap and do the right thing.  I fluctuate between anger and extreme grief over the whole situation. But one thing is constant, he isn't here and he should be.

When you talk about the stages of grief, I am still in denial and anger... I doubt I will ever hit acceptance.  I am angry most often at him for leaving all us in a final act of selfishness.  Then I get upset with myself for being angry with him when he isn't here to defend himself. Still often, I miss him terribly and our talks about life and the deeper meaning of why we are even here. I doubt that I will even have a friend as close as he was to me.  He was unique, one of a kind, but one thing I do know, that ask I continue through life, I hope to teach my daughter to be the kind of person that is non-judgmental, compassionate, and loving because even with all his problems, that is the kind of person that Matt was.

Once we made a rather stupid promise to sing the "Meatball" song everyday for year... I think we succeed at it for about two months.  See he had read something about habits.  If you do the same thing every day for at least a month, it becomes a habit and after a period of time, it becomes subconscious.  So Matt surmised that if it was a habit then you would never forget the memory attached to it.  Our memory was putting meatballs in someone's tailpipe....Actually we put a tried to put 10 pounds of ground beef in it and it wouldn't work, so we had to make meat balls.  The whole time Matt was talking in this cheesy, fake Italian accent.  Think Scarface and a cross of Don Quixote and Columbo... It was awful but yet so funny that I could barely make meatballs. Unfortunately we weren't able to see the fruits of our labor, but we sure heard about it.  And no one ever knew it was us!!! I am sure that they do now.... Oh yeah and we topped it off with a potato!!!

Matthew Scott Howerton, you will be forever missed, but always remembered and most definitely loved...