Last Saturday I drove to Lafayette, Indiana, ostensibly to look at a car. The deal couldn't be made (hail damage to my current vehicle, which had previously gone unnoticed, needs to be repaired first), so only half of the time there was spent at the dealership. I almost left for home straight afterward but my conscience drew me to Tippecanoe Memory Gardens, a cemetery where the remains of my friend Bret are interred.
A fifteen minute drive from the dealership took me to my destination. I'd been there once before, and remembered the columbarium where Bret's remains were kept in a wall crypt. A sign on the door said that the building was locked at 6:00pm daily. I checked my watch and my heart sank at the realization that it was 6:35pm. Thankfully, the doors were still open, so I walked in. The room was empty (of the living, that is, and full of pew-like seats at a slight angle with a center aisle cutting between them. There, at the front, in a small wall crypt, was Bret.
I don't remember the first time we met. He used to drive from Lafayette to Champaign on the weekends during the mid-to-late 1990s, primarily to dance the nights away at Chester Street Bar. He was studying to be a nurse. I attended his graduation. There was one night where a rather fit young man name Mike was drawing the attention of most of us on the dance floor, engaged in a captivating dance routine, when he fell off the speakers. Laid out on the floor, Mike was winded and took a moment to come around. Bret ran over to him, doing all the medical checks that he'd been training to do in nursing school. It was impressive.
Bret and his boyfriend, Jason, shared an apartment together in Lafayette. Our mutual friend, Jeromy, and I drove over there and stayed one weekend. We rented some movies -- Batman & Robin, and Priscilla Queen of the Desert (or was it To Wong Foo... I can't remember, perhaps it was both) -- and it must have been October, because Bret took us to a local haunted house. It was put on by a high school group, First Edition, that he'd been a member of when he was in school there, and I could tell he was proud to show it off, It was a really fun haunted house. I went back a few years later, with Ashley, and it was still a blast.
Earlier I mentioned attending Bret's graduation. Several of us from Champaign went. We drove over in our caravan of various cars, arriving in our street clothes, changing into something more formal at Bret & Jason's place, attending the graduation, then changing back into more comfortable attire and heading up to Chicago for the night to celebrate. That is when I learned, dear reader, that it takes about as long to get to Chicago from Lafayette, as it does from Champaign. It was a fun night, regardless. We were all a bunch of young gay men, up to no good in Boystown.
Alas, none of the time at the columbarium last Saturday was spent reminiscing about those fun times. No, it was a more solemn occasion. Bret and I ended our friendship on bad terms. He got a job working at a hospital, but it was in Champaign. He decided to keep his apartment in Lafayette, but needed somewhere to stay while in Champaign during the week. I volunteered my place, which was a mistake. Not everyone is suited to live together, and the old saying of 'familiarity breeds contempt' was on full display. Bret moved out, and we never spoke again.
Less than a decade later, in 2008, he committed suicide in Georgia.
Ashley was with me on the previous visit to Tippecanoe Memory Gardens, but this time I was alone. I thought, mistakenly, that I was finally left alone with Bret, but he really isn't there. Just his remains. Really, I was alone there with myself. It was a quiet room, very still. Boxes of kleenex were carefully places on the pews, and I used them. I spent maybe 30 minutes there, muttering to Bret a stream of disconsolate words about how I was sorry we'd parted company on bad terms, and that he'd felt no other choice but to take his own life.
I cried on the way home, listening to some of the music we'd had a mutual appreciation for during the '90s, upset with the fact that those days are long gone, and that I didn't always appreciate them, or the people, more at the time. Mostly, though, I was sad for Bret. We all die at some point, I know that. And we hadn't been in each others' lives for close to a decade. It's the wasted opportunities that I was sad (and angry) about. Bret was 33-years-old when he died. His 46th birthday would be coming up this Sunday. There's no reason he shouldn't be here.
It wasn't until a few days later that I thought, again, about the aforementioned fun times we'd had together, the things that had made us friends. I kicked myself upon the epiphany that that's what I should have been muttering about back at Tippecanoe Memory Gardens a few days earlier. Not regrets, but happy remembrances. Because, when I recall Bret, first and foremost I think of his vibrancy, his life force, his smile, his eyes, his nasally voice, the way he would describe certain things, how he took care in the way he dressed, and that he could be a heck of a lot of fun.
That, at least for now, is how I choose to think of him. I just wish it wasn't a memory.
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