2003, San Francisco Bay Area

By Tim O’Rourke

Dear Matt,

Don’t worry about missing my graduation, there were too many people I had to schmooze anyway. Not that talking with you that gloomy day late in May would have been anything but easy and natural; it’s just not important that you weren’t physically there. The boys were there for me, and for you, in a way.

Marty, Randy, Clay, Zach, Vinny, Jarod, and Jeremy were in the audience, next to the stage. I can remember Marty yelling, “Nice work, Dickhead!” Remember when we talked about me finishing college? I think you were more excited than me, fervently going over the plan for our future. Raising kids on the same block, owning a restaurant, all that ridiculous shit. It was strange not seeing you standing there with the boys by the stage, your big nose sticking out from under your Tigers hat. But I know you would have been there if you could.

You also missed out on Marty’s birthday. We planned on The City, limos, and women galore, but in true hometown fashion we ended up in a dive bar in Concord by ourselves, playing PhotoHunt, darts, and laughing until the wrinkled, raspy-voiced bartender told us, “I need to get home and fuck my husband.” Another small town Saturday night, just how you like ’em.

My parents finished remodeling the house. I think you saw it in the gutting-out process, but now you wouldn’t recognize it. The wood slabs on the deck don’t bend under your feet anymore, and the plastic ashtrays have been replaced by glass ones that get tossed in the dishwasher nightly. Cute how they wait until you leave to upgrade, huh. My mom says she thinks about you every day, which I’m not sure I believe.

I moved into a new place. It’s a real shithole in Lafayette. It’s called Park Terrace Apartments; we call it Trailer Park Terrace. The deck makes cracking sounds when more than one person is on it. The air conditioner leaks something on the carpet that smells like feet. The garbage disposal spits food back up, instead of sucking it down. But this place is still better than the last one, and a lot better than the floorless shanty you and Randy lived in before you left.

I’m sure you heard Sammy got drafted by the Raiders. Third round, hundreds of thousands of dollars, a new Range Rover, and the same stupid laugh and perfect grin. They assigned him number 54. Five plus four equals nine, your former baseball number. We still talk to him, even though pro ball keeps him busy. He loves that his number means something.

The girls are good, but Lindsay’s San Diego apartment burned down. She’s OK, but you already know that. Erin misses you and wants to talk. She calls me sometimes and talks about subjects too serious for weekend nights. I think she wants to let me hear her cry. Monica has a huge Herpes sore on her lip that’s been there for months. You were lucky you did your thing before the contamination. Other than that she’s as pretty and sweet as you remember.

You probably thought I wouldn’t get to this, but you missed out on your service. Well, actually, the service sucked. Almost everyone cried. Clay was stoic, but had to keep passing me Kleenex. A girl you barely knew passed out at the beginning. Marty had to carry her out the back. He looked as pale as she did when he sat back down.

The town hall was overflowing with people. I spoke, Chris spoke, Marty spoke, Rocky spoke, and Jacob read something you wrote about home and friendship, the two things you seemed to care about most. What other dickhead besides you could be living in San Diego, and then Chico — two college-age paradises — and still drive home every other week to the boredom of small-town Clayton just to hang out with the same people.

I feel bad about what I said on that stage in front of everyone. I talked about how you were called Matt by adults, but — for more than five years — most of your friends called you Wayne. I think some of your relatives took it the wrong way. I tried to keep it light, especially after a few melodramatic, self-indulgent speeches. I swear some of our friends were making themselves cry up there in front of everybody.

We set up a memorial at The Crash Site. That’s what people refer to the place where you died, The Crash Site. It has a big, white cross, an Irish flag and candles, plastic flowers and some other garbage. Before all this, I’d glance at roadside memorials with balloons, flowers, and stuffed animals and forget about them in moments. Now I stare and can’t forget.

The morning after we found out about the accident, Marty, Zach, Jeremy, Randy and I went to The Crash Site and picked up the debris the police and workmen left. Your mom wanted us to find your necklace. Marty climbed 20 feet up the tree you hit, thinking the necklace could have gotten stuck on a branch when you were flung out of the truck and through the branches. He couldn’t find it. It turned out the police had made a mistake; they still had the necklace.

We picked up pieces of your taillights, some empty Camel packs, a Creedence tape, and a paramedic throw blanket with a dark, almost brown bloodstain on it. We figured this was the kind of stuff your family shouldn’t have to see when they stopped at The Crash Site. I wish I hadn’t seen it, either.

But that was a nice move bringing that gust of wind over us when we were leaving. It was perfectly still the entire time we were there, then — whoosh — you brought that gust, upending the bag of crash debris over my head. Randy and I looked at each other and started cracking up, but you saw that, didn’t you, dickhead?

I’ll be honest. I’m getting sick of writing to you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but sometimes when I think about you I start to feel terrible. It’s OK when I’m with our friends and we talk about you. We laugh, mostly idealizing your qualities or making fun of stupid stuff you did — pissing on your parents’ wall when you were sleepwalking, for instance. But when I’m alone, thinking about you can be draining, especially when I make myself realize I won’t see you again. No more talks about our future, raising kids in the same neighborhood and running a restaurant; no more being the two Irish guys in a diverse group of scoundrels; no more baseball, beers, or brotherly banter.

I was playing a football video game the other night and the computer assigned me a group of fake players. My quarterback’s name was Nolen, spelled with an E, just like your last name. He sucked, but what are you going to do?

Keep dropping hints like that, it makes this much easier.

Your brother,

Tim

Tim O’Rourke is an arts and culture editor and writer in Eugene, Oregon. He enjoys the Northwest but misses home, friends, and the Bay Area.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 | Email This Post

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 12:03 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.