I remember this day like it was yesterday and like the worst nightmare you can never wake up from. I was sitting at work and I get a messages that one of my closest friends for 10 years had killed himself. Accidental overdose. He had been suffering for years with depression and Bi-Polar Disorder. Sometimes you just do not know what to do for a friend that is hurting so much or what you can do to ease the pain. Immediately, flights were booked home from all over the world (Poland, Hawaii, etc), pick up of friends from train stations took place and we were just trying to get everyone together so we can both mourn and celebrate his life together as a family. It was a sad but beautiful day. It was a gathering of friends that are more like family you never get see. Unfortunately, it takes an event like this to get everyone together but due to the rat race of life, it’s almost impossible for everyone be in the same place at the same time. They had 4 viewings over 2 days for him and the amount of laughs and tears shared was overwhelming. Everyone got up and told stories about our friend, all the stupid things we did together, how he will be missed and how much we cherished the time we spent together. New friends were made and bond restored with friends long forgotten about.
On the way home from the first night of the viewing, my friend who I had fought with years ago kept popping into my head. While on the parkway, I swallowed my pride and allowed myself to become as vulnerable as I knew inside that I was. Fighting back tears, I called him to apologize for what had happened between us. The problems I caused with his family and how burying a close friends put things into perspective. When you lose a family member, and I treat all my friends like family, you need to surround yourself with those you care about, strained relationships or not. The next day, I saw him for the first time in years. We gave a friendly hug and gave each other our sympathies. It was nice to see him after so long and it was also amazing how events can bring people back together.
Is our relationships perfect and/or 100 % mended? Absolutely not. Our differences still stand to this day but at the same time, we can be friendly towards one another and have conversation that was once impossible years ago. If each of us worked on mending strained relationships, imagine how much better we would all be. If we can admit our wrongs and come to terms with them and those we have hurt, your life starts to take a totally different shape. With the amount of suffering that exists in this world, we should not be adding to it with petty differences but work together to help end it.
I have thought a lot about Paul Fuller over the last few months and the things he never got to see. Good friends Adam and Bonnie getting married and expecting their first child, Amy getting married with the Hawaiian celebration, numerous record release shows, tours, graduations and all of us growing old together. He brought us all back together and it’s almost like he fulfilled some sort of duty to bring us as a family back together. Ive never written about the loss of my friend Paul and I hope this little story does him a little justice. If it wasn’t for him, I would still be angry about things that didn’t matter. RIP Paul, you are gone but in my head and my heart. I took your picture back out of storage as a reminder of how fragile life is. I do not want to lose another family member to bring all of us back together and forgive wrongs done and done to us.
i cant even read this with out crying... it's sad but so true that it took the loss of such an amazing life to bring us all together again. we get older, busier and forget the things that matter like driving hours to go play a show to 10 people, but those 10 people being the raddest kids ever. or sitting on the board walk talking and joking around tell every bar has emptied and we are forcibly kicked off. life is about relationships. I miss those days so much when we werent in a hurry to get the next thing done and could waste time with one another. that's how i'll always remember paul. his memory is stuck right in the best times of my life, right where he belongs.
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