Mr Jones

“Believe in me

Help me believe in anything

Because I want to be someone who believes..”

You know someone cares about you when your tears make them cry. That’s what I’ve been thinking about for the past ten minutes. Remembering when my sisters cried for me, and when my cousin Tom cried for me. And when I cried for him when his brother died. Just imagining their pain is unbearable, so you cry. You cry because you don’t want them to feel it. Because you can’t help that they do feel it.

I’m his favourite cousin and best friend. And I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know how to be there. He lost his bro, his partner in crime, possibly the closest person to him in his life. What can I say to him? He’s not the kind of person who will open up and tell you his feelings. He’s a 24 year old guy who grew up on a farm, who is almost painfully intelligent, in the way that he may be the smartest person I know, kind of a genius. And he has that whole macho, manly farmer thing happening. His best mate is overseas. I’m 3hrs away and stuck there for uni.

Its like that time where people start forgetting the loss. Or they start avoiding it in conversation. That’s kinda the worst part about it, that whole silence that makes it feel like it doesn’t matter anymore. Because people are still feeling the pain but they don’t want to bring it up because it’s past the appropriate grieving time. Sometimes because I live so far away I forget that he’s even gone. Because I’m not in their day to day lives enough to feel that immediate loss. So I can just be thinking about Tom and then casually wonder something about Bill. And then I remember that he’s gone, and the last time I saw him was my birthday, 6 months before he died, and I really should have made more of an effort to see him and be in his life. And I wonder if I was always as nice to him as I could’ve been.

I have this tissue box that for some reason the girls started drawing on the night of my birthday. They were drawing mermaids on it and taking pictures, just to be silly. It’s the only thing I have to remind me of the last time I saw him. I even used some of the tissues when crying about him. They only just ran out the other day.

I can’t imagine how Tom is feeling. He’s cheated of a best man. A best friend. We were supposed to all have kids that would play together while we drank beers on the outside porch. We were going to be old together. I’ve been trying not to think about it really. I mean I think about it every day, but I don’t think about it in depth. The boys all play guitar, suddenly they’ve all started learning the songs Bill used to play. Its almost like a duty. It’s their way of showing that his memory won’t be lost. That we’ll always play those songs and think of him. He loved getting drunk and playing guitar and singing to us. We all did. It’s like a family tradition.

It’s just so hard to think that I can never have a conversation with him again, because I can still hear his voice in my head. He really was the happy one who joked all the time and laughed the loudest. He was popular and had heaps of girlfriends and mates and played football and was good looking. I remember playing with him as kids, he loved animals. I just can’t understand why he did it. I don’t get why suddenly my cousin is missing from existence. I’ve been to his grave and I still don’t believe it. These things aren’t supposed to happen.

It really makes you re-evaluate life. I suddenly feel very clingy with my family, all my friends, I’m worried about everyone I know. I couldn’t handle it being someone closer, how terrible is that to think? But I mean I couldn’t handle it happening again. On top of this. I can’t bear it. So imagine how badly Tom must be feeling. That makes me cry. He’s practically muted on the topic and he lost his closest friend. How do you help someone who can’t express themselves? I’ll be there in a few weeks, but that’s as soon as I can manage.

This year is like a nightmare I can’t wake up from. It’s the bad parrallel universe. Don’t you ever get that feeling like you’re living the bad life in a choose your own adventure? That you made the wrong choice down the line somewhere and wound up on the wrong path. That’s what 2010 has been for me. None of it is within my control. I can’t fix any of it.

He loved Mr Jones by Counting Crows. He loved a lot of songs but I can’t remember them all. Anyway, this song will always make me sad.

Tags: bill, death, family, friends, grief, life, rip, tom