It’s been fifteen years, almost to the day since a bit of ground was sanctified. It is a bit I have avoided since I moved here t the valley not long after, but yesterday I stood upon it to look at the marker commemorating one of the very few men I would proudly say I loved. But love is as always, blind, and sees no fault. I never saw this coming from him. 23 May 2010, my friend Matt took his own life. It was five months before I was back in the US from a life in England. I wish on everything that I would have been here to have done something, anything about it. But I was not. I did not know. And as such, I could not save him. So, I stood on his grave yesterday, looking at a marker that is as lovely as any, and so much less than the man he was.
The Matt I knew was so full of life. Knowing him was like knowing an elegant gesture. He was a clown, but not in the fool’s sense. He carried the bitter irony of life behind a smile and a tear painted on his face. And while I am so disappointed in which won, I still feel his encouragement to be a better man from all those years ago when I knew him in Florida. He called me ‘brother,’ and I still am so proud of that. It was like being appraised highly by someone more supreme than any art critic, an artist himself.
I won’t share the pictures I took of his grave. His family deserves privacy and love. But the image depicted on it shows a bit about the kind of man he was. Some conquer mountains. Some are the mountains. Matt was in a way, both.