I went to my friend's grandmother's home once. She lived in a huge gorgeous house, in a small community town outside of Toronto. I was around 19 or 20 when I went up there, but the image I have in my head is of my friend and I swimming in her glorious cement swimming pool, not as adults, but as kids. Young, immature and ridiculously self-absorbed adolescents with dreams and ambitions gushing from our lips and sexual energy spilling out of our pores. It may as well have been the summer we were sixteen, watching infomercials and talking on the phone; me ranting about my mother and how many chores she expected me to do until I found a summer job (seriously Mum, you want me to clean ALL the outside windows of the house?), and my friend lusting after Ludwig, the man we had met the year before, with the black curly chest hair who worked at City Perk, the local coffee shop we obsessed in. The man who bought the girl he loved blue roses and told our fifteen year old ears to watch the movie Stealing Beauty immediately, because that was the movie that would teach us about love. Or it could've been the warm autumn night we dirty danced with those beautiful Lybian men who we met at an ESL student party, who whispered in our ears the words to 'Shy Guy' and 'Be My Lover', our bodies grinding together, the room a haze of musky cologne, warm breath and sweat. That time has blurred into one long existential adolescent angst, and my friend and I were comrades in our mutual obsession, ecstatic wonder, and longing. The visit to her grandmother's was just one of hundreds of times we spent floating around in a desperate pool of our desire to become 'grown up'. To have sex, to fall in love (either order was fine), have babies. To have love affairs with sweet men and women who we'd tearfully have to part ways with due to our own high ideals and ambitions. We knew what we wanted, and at that time all we could do was hope that it would all turn out as we imagined it could.
As for my friend whose dear friend overdosed, he is one of those people who I didn't know and never heard of until his death. Kind of like Kurt Cobain. I was one of those girls who fell in love with Kurt after his tragic death and began listening non-stop to his music. The 'wake' I'm going to is more of a huge celebration of his life, the kind of thing I would want for my own life when I die. My friend asked me to come and at first I was hesitant. How could I be a part of a celebration for someone I had never known? I felt like I might be overstepping my bounds and was worried about how it might look to those who did have a relationship with him. My friend said that this was exactly why I should come, because he was the kind of person I would have really liked and gotten along with. 'I really wish you guys could've met," He said, "and now maybe you'll be able to feel like you had'. What a beautiful thought. I realized afterwards that I would be flattered if people came to a celebration of my life, simply because friends of mine were confident that we would've been friends HAD we known each other. And the world is connected over and over, intrinsic in how it draws us together.
I feel honoured to attend both of these celebrations. It makes me wonder how my own 'life celebration' would come together. Hopefully the food would be good. I think my family and friends would make sure of that.
Here's a little 6FU homage to Kurt Cobain:
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