My best friend growing up was Matthew.(the huge one in the middle)  I met Matthew in Kindergarten, on the first day.  We all gathered into the Gym, and they pulled out a parachute.  We would fluff the parachute into the air and the gym teacher would yell out stuff, and if you matched what she yelled out, you would run under the parachute, and…. Well, I don’t remember what the point was, maybe it was just to get to play under the parachute.

She yelled out,”If you have a birthday in January or February!”.  So, I’m running around under a fluffed up parachute, all of a sudden, the biggest kid I have ever seen in my life ran up to me.  He stopped, looked at me and said, “You are my best friend now.”

Honestly, I was a little scared, and then.. happy.  I looked at him and said, “OK!”

Turns out we rode the same bus, and lived in the same neighborhood.  From that day forward, I don’t think we went a single day without at least talking to each other.  All the way through elementary school, to middle school, and high school. (Meeting Omar, our other best friend, in 2nd grade) If I got in a fight, Matthew had my back, (Which was nice, because like I said, he was huge.)  If I was losing the fight, Matthew would pick up the other kid and throw him. Literally.

We built forts together, we had sleepovers together, we went on vacation together, we did Easter and Christmas together.  We smoked our first cigarette together.  We were inseparable.  Our neighborhood had dubbed us, “The Three Muskateers” because if you saw one of us, the other two were somewhere close.  If there was trouble, we were blamed, whether we did it or not.  (In all fairness, we normally did it.)

Matthew died six years ago, when he was 20. I was in Atlanta, and got a call from Omar.  I picked up the phone, and Omar simply said, “Matt’s dead.”  I immediately drove to my mom’s house, ran inside, and there he was, lying on my couch, lifeless.  He had taken a morphine patch, but chewed on it… slipped into a deep sleep, and choked.

That was the end of our friendship.  No goodbyes, no I’ll miss you, nothing.  Just a phone call, and a quick glance at my lifeless best friend, before he was moved to a stretcher, and taken to the morgue.

Over the years his death has come back and knocked the air out of me.  He wasn’t at my wedding, he wasn’t around for me to call and tell him I’m going to be a dad.  He has not been around to watch me grow out of addiction and in to sobriety.  He isn’t here now, for me to pick up the phone and call. ( I imagine we’d text now.)  He isn’t here.

There have been times since he died, before I ‘believed in God’, where I would lay in bed at night and talk to him.  I would tell him how my day went, and ask him to look out for me.  I don’t know if he really ever did, but it’s nice to think that maybe he put a word in for me.

I miss him.  I’m at a time in my life where I really wish he was around.  In really happy times, I want to pick up the phone and call him and Omar on 3-way.  And in really sad times, I want him to walk on over to my house, and go walking in the woods with me.

There are just times I sit down and wonder what would have happened had things been different.  I wonder if I had picked up the phone 45 minutes earlier, and given him a ring.  I wonder if he would have walked with me in recovery.  I wonder what he would have said at my wedding.  I wonder a lot of things. One thing I do know.  Matthew, I miss you brother.