Do I deserve these feelings?

Six years ago today, I got home from work, and was sitting across from my then-husband telling him about my day when his cell phone rang. At first, I didn’t pay a lot of attention, then he said some things like “holy, shit” and “I love you, man,” and hung up. It had been his friend and former bandmate on the other end of the line. “He finally did it,” my ex reported to me, his eyes wide with shock, then repeated, “He finally did it.”

It wasn’t good, this thing that their band leader had finally done; it was, in fact, the worst thing, the thing everyone who loved him had worried about for longer than I could remember. After years and years of equal parts magical creative output and tremendous mental struggle, the ‘he’ in question had taken his life.

We both immediately started to cry — typical for me, atypical for him. We had loved this poet/songwriter so much since we were in our 20s. He had become family to us, sincerely like a brother to my ex, someone who understood him like no one else. We were both in a bizarre state of belief/disbelief. We had known this was a possibility forever — there had been other attempts — yet it still felt surreal, impossible. We had about five whole minutes to let this sink in. Because the phone rang again.

I heard my ex say, “Well, he always had his darkness,” and I mouthed “Who is it?”

“Rolling Stone,” he mouthed back, and I began vigorously making a chopping sign across my neck — darkness, indeed — trying to get him to stop talking. “HANG UP,” I finally whisper-yelled, afraid he would say something in this fresh moment of horror that would be printed and that he would regret having said. He did, with more grace than I could have mustered in that moment.

What the fuck, I couldn’t stop thinking, How did they find us so fast? And what kind of assholery does it take to grill a person like that, someone who just learned of the sudden death of a loved one? Also, Jesus, Rolling Stone just called our house?! I never realized he was that famous.

In the aftermath, my ex and I talked about the fact that he didn’t seem to realize he was that famous either, that he had maybe never quite understood just how much his words and songs mattered to people, countless people. That his book of poetry and all of his albums and concerts and cartoons and energy and humor and kindness were so deeply important to not just us, but people all over the globe. That maybe he finally did it, in part, because he felt overlooked and underappreciated. Maybe somehow, tragically, even unloved?

Which is insane to think about now. Because he more or less became sainted that day. Tears enough to fill the sea were shed. And these years later, on his birthday, there are still full readings of his poetry collection in cities and towns all over. Unknown zillions of concerts with dozens (hundreds?) of bands covering his tunes have happened. Today, and every time this awful anniversary comes around, people like me who were lucky to know him will have a hard time keeping it together. All those who didn’t actually know him, but felt like they did because his work was so open and human and beautiful and touching, will also have a hard time keeping it together.

When his obituary ran in The New York Times (with a photo, even), it finally sunk in on me that he was really damn famous. I was stunned all over again. I dearly wish he got to see all of this gratitude and acknowledgement, and like to think it might have changed the outcome if he had. Maybe it wouldn’t. And maybe he can? Who knows.

Today, I’m just giving myself an overdue gift of acknowledging how terrible the whole experience was, how much pain I was in too. Allowing myself to remember that day and the time that followed. Even though I knew this incredible man since we were very young and cared about him tremendously, I felt like I didn’t really deserve to mourn him, especially in any kind of public way. Everyone else loved him so much, and so hard. I was deeply worried about my ex and incredibly sad for the other band members and his wife. I didn’t insinuate myself into the funeral — I just sent my ex. I didn’t say anything online — it felt almost unseemly. I only wore a little pin with his initials and felt almost ashamed.

Which is astonishing since I wrote and published a whole book about feeling disenfranchised about my grief over my brother ( a book in which I write about how said band leader consoled me and let me tag along on a leg of their tour when my brother died), and I have a personal soap box talking endlessly about how we all deserve to have our feelings about loss recognized. For crying out loud, I teach writing workshops encouraging my students to own their stories, including their sense of bereavement over anyone or anything. Just goes to show how bad we are at agony, how much we worry about the feelings of others, how brutal and stigmatized suicide is. Or possibly, how stuck I got with this one in particular.

Even now, I’m not going to name him for fear of feeling in any way exploitative — I’m just putting this fantastic photo here that includes his lovely face alongside that of my ex and another of their talented, sweet bandmates — because you probably know who he is. After all, he was famous.

But I’m putting this little piece out there at last, to admit how much my heart hurts. Because he was amazing, and I miss him, and I should practice what I preach. No two people experience grief the same way, but I think we are all entitled to what we feel. Today, I feel both outrageously happy he graced my world, and gutted that he’s gone. So there.