Dear Nick,
To this day it feels like some huge type of mistake.
Like a computer that’s encountered an unrecoverable error that can somehow never be corrected.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked back at that time, those stretch of weeks, that day itself, and thought…
What the fuck.
What the fuck happened?
I don’t have any fucking idea. Still. None.
That whole trope about a character going on vacation and never coming back.
What the fuck.
…
Today is Dia de los Muertos. My family has never really been in the habit of celebrating, but your connection to Mexico seemed to be a burning flame that was forever ignited. You used to come back with new stuff all the time. Skeletons holding instruments. Small canvases with Spanish poetry. Iguanas and other animals, colorful and alive in spirit, despite their expired bodies. The living room and kitchen always seemed magical in that way.
I imagine that it was after you had passed that Laurie had set up a sort of forever altar in your honor. An altar fit for a king. An altar fit for a god.
Some people truly are gifts. They live life with a full glass, share their beauty, their selflessness, and thus enrich the lives of others. The ways you made our lives—my dad, my mom, my sister and myself—every single one of us, better. You were one of one.
…
I remember the day Gaby arrived at my mother’s door and told her the news. I remember my mother breaking down. I was in the kitchen. Again, that error in processing. Nick? Not Nick. Not that Nick. Nick…
Feeling numb and hollow is overrated.
I remember the memorial. A strange, strange day. It felt like nobody understood what was happening. A collective doubt and confusion. Arriving to a formal ceremony where the man was still so alive. Words being spoken. Tenses being confused. A gray day. Exiting the chapel to twilight. Mist on the ground.
How?
…
I remember being upstairs with Noah. Maybe we were watching something on the computer or playing Half-Life or something. You coming up the stairs with two small glasses, some orange substance inside.
“Try this. Let me know what you think.”
Sip. Sip. Echhhh.
Noah didn’t seem to have a problem, though.
You stood there for a moment, sort of gleaming in the majority success of your latest concoction, and smiled that smile, with that toothy grin and full beard, eyes squinting from too much joy, and went back downstairs ready to supply the other visitors after the margarita taste test had been complete.
Oh, Nick.
I remember movie nights in the movie room. Watching “Red Rock West” and “Kill Me Again.” My dad mentions, and the memory is indeed vivid, how you used to sit so close to the screen, taking everything in. These nights were an education. Movies I’d never seen nor heard of. Film noir. Michael Madsen. Noah and I transfixed. UW Football games against UCLA and us getting run over by Maurice Jones-Drew. Me, so utterly uninvested, you, so utterly disgusted at a wasted opportunity by the Dawgs.
The mythological horse track. What my dad and I were doing there when our guesses were as good as random, while you, Alex, and Noah had the whole fix down. Studying the papers. Watching the horses pace before the races. A focus mixed with thrill mixed with calm like no other. I remember when Noah hit the trifecta one time.
Who could forget the music in the dining room? The stereo of 60s and 70s sugaring us all up with some sweet R&B from the likes of Al Green or rocking out and jazzing the house to a soundtrack of The Band, Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan. Soothing us with Tracy Chapman.
How you welcomed us all on Tuesday nights before Hebrew school. The door always open.
How you scooped up short hops, casting a net across the infield.
How you mediated, how you listened.
How you wrote and wrote and wrote.
How you became a second father to my sister.
How you became such a trusted friend to my mother.
How you used to pick me up in that white car when I used to get migraines. Walk me to the car. Lay me in the back seat. Take me to Ravenna. Walk me inside the house. Pick me up and lay me on Noah’s bed to sleep it off.
How you became an irreplaceable brother to my father.
—I can see him at his table, sitting. Looking at the pictures on the table. Looking at pictures of you on the wall. Looking up at the ceiling for you and wondering where you might be. Rubbing his eyes from behind his glasses.
“That one will never make sense to me, Joshua.”
How?
…
Nick—
I can’t help but notice how much we all miss your powers down here. How we do our best to carry you on.
We love you so much. Every day more and more. We miss you, we miss you, we miss you. We love you, we love you, we love you.
My family didn’t have tequila on the altar this year. Forgive us. We’re a little new at this whole thing. But we’ll have a bottle waiting for you in the next.
Que sigas disfrutando de los nubes…que te sigas durmiendo suavemente, con comodidad, y que las almohadas estén llenas del amor que tenemos por usted…que nunca parren tus viajes arriba.
Salud. Dinero. Amor.
Te amamos para siempre.