Joey

JOEY

In the scheme of things, this is not my loss to grieve. There is a family. There are children. And a wife. There are brothers and parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews and friends and all the usual acquaintances. This is THEIR loss to grieve, not mine. Yet there is something unique and grievous that I feel, something quiet and simmering that doesn’t deserve a card or sympathy of any kind. Rather, it is the kind of loss that tugs a little stronger at the heart than the usual evening news and leaves behind a little hole of silence where once there was a small flutter.

Joey was my first love. We all have one. Joey was mine.

Joey was killed in a car accident yesterday. He was horribly and violently ripped from life and thrust into whatever comes next, probably before he even realized what was happening. In doing so, he leaves behind an entire life of people who will need to grieve deeply and learn to function without him. I have no such pretense. It’s been 20 years or more since I’ve even seen him. But his memory occupies a space in me that died just a little with him and it’s not something I can easily ignore.

There was a group of us, all friends in some way and we watched each other grow from children into young adults. Joey was part of that group. To me, he always stood a little taller than the other boys, always looked a little different, always gave me a different feeling. Only when I became a teenager did I realize it was because I had a raging crush on Joey. Everything about him made me swoon. He was a little bigger than the other boys, broad shouldered and tall and muscular. He had blonde curls and a wicked smile. He was a little devious, intense and secretive, but when he let you into his world, it felt like you had won the golden ticket.

I remember the way he made me feel more than I really remember HIM. It’s been so many years that many of the details of him have faded. The man he had become is vastly unknown to me. There were some vague reconnections across social media and through mutual friends over the years, but nothing broad or deep or even that direct and, to be honest, I had no expectations otherwise. But deep inside me, there still lives the boy who made me swim in lust and admiration and excitement and fear. There still lives in me the young girl who leapt at him and drank in whatever he was willing to share.  He was the one who made me feel things that I didn’t know I was capable of. He was the one who introduced me to what it felt like to be a woman. He scared me and made me a little crazy and he left something of himself in me that transcends time and distance. 

Through time and in this real life, I never expected to see him again. But somewhere in me is still that girl that longed, just for a moment, to feel again the way I once did in his presence. First love is personal and universal all at once. It’s beautiful and fragile and it lingers on inside of us long after the feelings have subsided. It leaves an opening to that moment when we discover that love is so much more than we ever imagined; it leaves behind tiny footprints of who we were that show us the path to how we 've become who we ARE. First love is tragic in its essence because it almost NEVER lasts, but it does live forever inside of us.  It breathes the innocence of youth. 

The finality of Joey’s death takes something away from that. It locks a door that has always been left slightly ajar.

With Joey goes a little more of my youth, a little bit of optimism, a little bit of the expansiveness that first love brings. Joey’s death brings a familiar but sad reminder that all of life is fleeting and that the moments we cherish never actually do come around again. It reminds me that it’s important to tell people how they make us feel, especially when those feelings are loving, rather than waiting until they’re gone. It reminds me that, if I’m being honest with myself, none of us actually really understands why we’re living this life in the first place. It forces me to stare down the black hole of uncertainty that surrounds life and death and ponder the nature of why we’re here, why do we feel such joy only to lose it just as quickly? Why do we live moments that we never get back again? Why do we long for a past that we can embrace no more than a thin fog? This is the luxury of thought that comes with the type of grief that doesn’t rock your entire world, but rather refocuses life through different lenses.

My heart aches for Joey’s family. I’ve been through my share of sorrows in this life to know well how loss tears the fabric of your life into shards. The simple act of restitching your life back together takes the effort of Sisyphus, constantly pushing the boulder up the mountain only to have it roll back down again. And when you finally reconstruct the pieces of you into something resembling a life again, you discover it doesn’t resemble anything you’ve ever known before. It can be good. It can be bad. It can be emotionally eviscerating. For Joey's family, it will hurt forever. Over time, my sadness over Joey’s death will level out and I will stop coming back to it 100 times a day. Maybe next week, I’ll only think of it 50 times a day, and the week after only 20 times. But when I come back to visit that place inside me where Joey and my first love reside, something will always be missing.

Rest in peace, Joey, and know you were loved.