35. to pieces

written 10 months and 11 days after

Nov. 2009 — he still owns that jacket and wore it even in recent years

This week, his roommate from uni called me. They lived together in first year in a small dorm room. We talked for an hour, though I think it could have gone longer if either of us had the time.

He told me stories I hadn’t heard before because those were stories that were his roommate’s to know, to tell, to hold. His stories reminded me of mine, things I had forgotten I still knew about him.

I told one story and immediately thought about writing it down in a Note, to save it so I could write about it later. As soon as I opened the Note in my phone, though, the story had slipped away. It had been drawn up by the specific alchemy of the conversation and once I stepped away from it, down it went into the well again.

This phone call was one of the few, dedicated times that I have specifically spoken about him. (Writing about him, for me, is different to speaking about him; for one, it doesn’t involve another person actively in front of me or on the other end of the line.)

Part of this reticence to speak about him out loud is rooted in the pain of invoking his name, which I struggle to do even in these letters. I’m not entirely sure why it’s so agonizing to write down — I think it has something to do with how many times I said his name over the years, in jest, in laughter, in love, in anger, in all the other shades one says their beloved’s name. Writing or saying it now always feels like a plea — an unanswered one sent out into the echo chamber of loss.

Another part of the hesitance to talk about him is the pain that always follows any extended conversations about him. It’s a wave of grief that never makes it to shore; it just keeps curling inside me, never moving forward, never exhausting itself on an unseen shore.

Still, in thinking about it, the greatest aspect of my resistance to speaking about him with others is the inevitable emotion involved in sharing the stories I have, in hearing the stories they have. Always, I end up crying.

There’s all kinds of reasons I don’t want to cry, the perhaps most minor but still notable being that sometimes, I just don’t want to. Recently, after the 10 month marker passed, I started crying every day again. It’s not intentional; the grief has just swamped me.

The jags are not hours long like they were in months 1-4 when I also cried every day but they are still just as draining and awful, leaving me dogged by exhaustion—a leaden shadow.

Because of this, I avoided the phone call with my sweet man’s first roommate for weeks. I was terrified to talk about him on the phone with someone I’d never met, only heard about. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about him, I did, I just needed some time to feel ready.

When I finally scheduled the call, I did cry, several times, throughout. I cried for a long time after. It took me a day to recover from the emotional hangover. That might make it sound like I regret doing it which isn’t true. I am glad I took the call. I would have talked for longer if I could have. It was just hard. It is hard.

His roommate told me how, in college, as a Halloween costume, Kurtis wore a headband around which he had tied condoms, filled with water. I have no idea what the concept of that costume was supposed to be (itt’s funny, I can imagine him telling me). His roommate told me that Kurtis kept wondering all night why people would flick the water condoms against his head. He was genuinely baffled.

“That’s so him too,” I said, laughing on the phone.

October 2016, the 5km race where he ran 8km

This story about the condom costume reminded me of the time that my family dressed up to run a 5km race in October. I have always hated costumes of all kinds and wore my running gear, saying, relatively rightly, that it would be as if I was in costume because no one else would wear athletic clothes.

My sister and brother-in-law and mother dressed in full fleece animal onesies, something they regretted when the day turned out warmer than expected.

Kurtis, of course, went further than all of us. He loved costumes.

He wore a crinkly, ancient red nylon jogging suit and a long haired black wig. The hair was so long it reached his butt. Around his waist he fastened a yellow Walkman that was so poorly attached it immediately fell off as soon as he started running, shattering into pieces on the road. He chased after the scattered parts, dodging other runners in the process and shouting, with chagrin, “my Walkman!” For the rest of the run, he held the Walkman in his hand.

This was the same run where he, always faster than all the rest of us, somehow mistook someone cheering on the sidelines as a race marshal, directing him to turn. He was apparently oblivious to the massive red balloon arch that marked the finish line ahead.

Instead, he turned and ended up running almost 3 more kilometres before finally meeting back up with the correct running path. He crossed the finish line, wig still on, just a minute or so ahead of me which is an excellent metric for how slow a runner I was and how quick a runner he was.

As his old roommate and I swapped stories, we laughed over his open-heartedness, his quirkiness, his flair. We both admired his easy and gentle way with people. Kurtis had always told me that I would like his old roommate, and I found he was not wrong.

When the roommate and I hung up, I was so glad I had spoken to him. I feel a bond and a gratitude and a care whenever his friends text me or call me or spend time with me. There is something ineffably meaningful about being in the company of those who loved him. That was always one of Kurtis’ most enduring optimisms: he believed that love was enough to connect all of us.

Each of the people that knew him, deeply, or casually, professionally, or personally hold pieces of him that are precious to me. Each time someone shares part of theirs with me, I join it to my larger understanding of him. I hoard the emails or DMs or texts or calls that I receive.

I’m grateful for the people that share, I want them to. I am also grateful to them for being patient with me — for letting me take the time to hear what they have to say.

During the call with his old roommate, the roommate said to me that after reading the letters, he was struck by the invocation of Kurtis.

“You really knew him,” he said to me. “He was a weird dude — totally himself — and you knew him.”

I cried hearing that too. It feels like one of the kindest things anyone could say to another. After all, how many of us can really say the people in our lives truly know us and see us?

It’s a brutal and beautiful and ongoing labor of deep love to really see the people we love in their entireties.

I remember once, in a difficult season, I looked directly at my sweet man and told him that he didn’t know me.

“You just know what you want to think of me,” I said. “You have a version of me in your head but could you say what my deepest values are? Could you articulate what motivates how I move through the world?”

It was hard for me to say it to him because he loved me without end, without limit, entirely and fully. But you can love someone in this capacious way and still fail to really see them. He and I cried, I remember that. But after that conversation, things changed.

Over the next few months, we both shared things with each other and it led to a more expansive way of being between us. I could feel the luck of it, even then, even in it.

After a while, he could explain to me why I did something, or why I felt a specific way, and he would be so right, so accurate in his assessment that I would pretend to clutch my pearls, and he would dissolve into laughter.

“You get it,” I would say. “How audacious.”

It is a rare thing to feel deeply, incredibly understood. It is also possible, if you are willing to want it.

In the stadium of our love, to feel known by him was one of the most gorgeous things he gave me.

Now, I feel unintelligible.

Winding amid the exhaustion (I could barely find the energy to write this letter, if I’m being honest) and the dull, constant throb of headache, and the sense of loneliness and the relentless feeling that something is wrong, is something else entirely.

I think it’s got something to do with me but because I have become alien to myself when I try to say the name of this thing, this thing that has to do with me, I can’t grasp it. Instead, I wind up speaking his name.

Kurtis, I say. You know what I’m trying to say. You know what I mean.

I was always saying that to him. “You know what I mean?” I would say at the end of a long rant or bit or day or story. He would grin.

“You always ask me that,” he said.

“But do you?” I would say.

Most of the times, he would say, “Yeah, babe. I know.”

And sometimes, when he didn’t know, he would say, “I don’t really know, but I do know you.”

“Yes,” I would say. “That’s exactly it.”