Dec 7
Today Matty died.
I held his hands. Is that weird? Is it weird that two straight guys held hands? My wife was there, a hand on by back. His ex-wife was there, off to the side, huddled into a chair, sobbing quietly into a napkin or something. I wanted to punch the whore. Perhaps that was why I was holding his hands. To make sure that his death wasn’t tainted somehow. Matty didn’t have any kids of his own, not after Charlie the whore stepped out of his life in the most destructive fashion a person can. But I am not writing in this journal about Charlie. This is about Matty.
I already miss him horribly. There is a hole in my heart where he was. I felt it when he died. My spirit was torn asunder. Pulled from its bonds within my chest, and laid down on a field of glass, salt, and darkness.
He held my hand, looking me in the eyes. They were so blue. So very blue. I think I was crying. I can’t remember. He couldn’t talk, the respirator was forcing air down into his burnt lungs, his ravaged heart had a hard time just keeping up with his ragged breathing. I could feel it through his paper skin, the thin sheath over bone and death. He glowed with it. The death mask hovered over his bed, the presence of something else sat in that room calling him home. Calling his spirit outwards.
He looked me in the eyes, squeezed my hands gently, the barest ghost of a smile crinkling the edges of his own. Then he was gone. The eyes paled, his lids lowered, and I could feel the wild flapping of a hundred raven wings lift off around me. My wife didn’t feel it, Charlie snivelling in the corner didn’t feel it. But I felt it. Thousands of black feathers pushing the air around me to the corners of the room, his hands going soft, his paper skin fluttering still, the heart giving a few last attempts at a beat… and in all of it, I didn’t see his last breath. I didn’t need to.
Charlie heard the monitor go. It was toned down to almost nothing, but she heard the flatline. She screamed like a little girl getting her ears pierced and ran from the room. My wife squeezed my shoulder as I lowered my head to his hands.
I know I cried then. I cried until my wife forced me up and told me they had to take him away.
I ended up here, at home, staring at this journal.
Shit.
*********
Dec 9
Today was a little better. I expected Matty to come by the office and ask about the weekend game. Then I remembered he was dead. I had to go to the bathroom to cry again.
Charlie called me. I ignored the cunt.
*********
Dec 10
Charlie finally got a hold of my wife. My wife called me. Matty had a will. Who the fuck has a will at 35? Matty did. Probably did it as soon as he found out about the cancer. Probably when the rest of us just thought he had a cold. Probably when he found out that Charlie was going to leave him.
You clever bastard, Matty.
Because it turns out that he had himself declared quarter Native American a few years ago. I can’t remember what tribe accepted his claim… but he had the bloodline proven. And in his will he asked for a burial that I had never heard of. And he asked me to do it.
Fitting I guess. I was there when he died, I will be there when I commit his body to the unknown.
********
Dec 15
It took a week for the coroner to release his body to us. It is amazing the silly shit someone has to go through to get their hands on human remains. The forms, the phone calls, the threats and law disclaimers. Thank God Matty had the will and the declaration. It saved me a lot of red tape. Now his body is on ice down at the mortuary that was willing to help me out.
Tomorrow I am taking Matty’s body up to my family’s farm. My mom was very supportive of Matty’s request, and we have the signatures, just like a body farm.
My wife is going with me. I told Charlie to go fuck herself.
*******
Dec 16
I knew the tree when I saw it. It was a huge spruce smack dab in a grove of aspen. It was perfect. Matty would have loved it. I made a platform with the ascending gear from the Moab trip last year, just a simple injury rig. Matty probably only weighed 90lbs. There was nothing the cancer left behind. Just dead meat riddled with genetic instructions gone horribly wrong.
I tied him to the rig, gentle knots around his shrouded form, and pulled it behind me as I ascended. My wife held the guides, and I tried my best not to shake it too badly. The spruce was strong. It felt right.
It felt like hours climbing. Pulling him up behind me, it felt like days. In reality, it only took me 8 minutes. Eight minutes.
I pulled him close. Smelling the scent of a warming dead body in my arms. Something familiar was under there though. The smell of a friend in grade school coming over to spend the night, the smell of a buddy in junior high, helping me fight those bullies off, the smell of a teammate as we played football at homecoming… the smell of a best man punching me in the shoulder at my reception calling me the best asshole he had ever known in front of all my friends and family.
I tied him carefully to the highest branch I could. It wasnt pretty, but it would hold. I climbed up the last couple feet and cleared the branches above, giving his cold face a view of the sky above. And with that, I kissed his forehead on the way down, trying to not blind myself with grief that wanted to pour freely from my eye sockets.
My wife held me as I got it out of my system. Above us, hidden within the golden leaves of all the aspen, a flock of ravens burst out to the sky.
A thousand black feathers raising all at once.
See you later, Matty, see you later.