Between Bowie and Prince: A letter to the friend I lost in 2016
The world stopped when my friend died, but his memory carried me to places I never could have imagined
We lost you somewhere between Bowie and Prince. Yeah, Prince died. Then Muhammad Ali. It was a weird year.
Immortals perished in bulk. It was a 12-month streaming gut-punch service of celebrity death. You knew about Alan Rickman and Justice Scalia. After you, we lost so many more. Gene Wilder. Florence Henderson. Garry Shandling. That’s just a sampling. It got to a point where you’d become skittish about dwelling on something you liked, because a star of that thing would die. Example: The guy who played Chekov in the new Star Trek movies. He died! Single-person car accident in his driveway due to a malfunction in the vehicle, which had been recalled. George Michael died on Christmas. Heart failure. Which, if you ponder the lyrics to “Last Christmas,” is soul crushing. Thanks, 2016 for one final kick in teeth, right? Except Carrie Fisher died two days later. Her mom, Debbie Reynolds, died the day after that.
You’ll be happy to know that Darryl Hall survived.
The weight of this was a collective drag on everything. Even if you weren’t personally connected with someone who died in 2016, you felt the sting. But we also lost someone we were personally connected with. We lost you.
I knew it on the second call. The first came from your phone at around 7 a.m. in Boston. 5 a.m. in Colorado. An obvious misdial. It woke me up. I rejected the call and went back to sleep. The second call came from Amy’s phone a few hours later. And then it was obvious. I ignored multiple calls from Amy and others trying to confirm what I’d already deduced. Until I answered Schrödinger’s phone, you could still be alive. Alive and dead in equal parts. That made it worse. I eventually had to pick up. I had to let you die. I’m sorry about that.
I spoke at your funeral. I forced myself to write for the first time in a long time. It took me a week to sort out that eulogy. I typed over tears in a creepy Denver hotel room, but I got it where it needed to be. I delivered the whole thing without breaking down. To be honest, I just didn’t have any cry left in me. People clapped when I finished. Never saw clapping at a funeral. That was all you.
“I was just wondering why he wasn’t on the top of the steps cheering for me,” Gordon said of his friend and teammate. That’s exactly how I felt when I finished speaking.
When José Fernandez died in a boating accident a few months later (sorry, Fernandez died last August, one of your favorites), Dee Gordon led off the next game with a home run, his first in a long time. “I was just wondering why he wasn’t on the top of the steps cheering for me,” Gordon said of his friend and teammate. That’s exactly how I felt when I finished speaking. I wanted to experience that moment with you.
It’s easy to be in touch with all that we lost that day. How hard it was for us. But I keep coming back to everything you lost as well. I told Amy, and I believe this, that you would have been the best at accepting your death. I don’t think you believed that you were due any more life than you received. That said, you lost time with your daughter, with your family. Sadie misses you, but she’s being really productive about it. She tells everyone she’s wants to be a cardiologist. She’s going to be a superstar.
Gosh, I wish you could’ve had one more year. Just for the sports. Almost every championship was an epic dogfight of historic significance. Men’s basketball? Villanova beat UNC on a buzzer beater. Great game. You would’ve loved it. NBA Finals? Golden State broke the Bulls’ record with 73 regular-season wins. They go up 3–1 on Cleveland in the finals before the Cavs come back and win the thing. Down to the final possession. Amazing. World Series? Man, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. The Indians took a 3–1 lead, but the series still goes to a seventh game. Cleveland blows it in the 10th(!) inning of Game 7. And who won? Please, the Cubs. Yeah, would I bother making that up? You want to know about Super Bowl LI? Well, hold on.
The universe was not fucking around. Its very clear message: If you have any living to do, you’d better do it now.
As great of a sports year as it was, it was difficult in so many other ways. By dying, you inadvertently legitimized mortality. You died at age 36, a month before my 37th birthday. Then my left retina detached. Almost lost vision in that eye. Permanently. The universe was not fucking around. Its very clear message: If you have any living to do, you’d better do it now. When the doctors put a gas bubble in my eye, I couldn’t fly. So, I took a train to Chicago for Elinore’s wedding. I started writing again. I got a credential to cover the Patriots. The part you would have loved: I asked Belichick tough questions. I didn’t back down. Things got interesting on the second day of training camp. I could’ve really used you while all of Boston was pummeling me on Twitter.
Amy started living too. The beginning was awful for her. The present is still difficult. Don’t worry, she’s come a long way, even if she doesn’t see it. That said, it’s hard for all of us to see her fight against the normalcy of life without you. But she’s gone from a person who never smiled to a person who smiles. If that’s the only win she had in the first year, I’ll take it. But it’s not. She went to every Broncos home game, and a few road games. To honor you, she bought Super Bowl tickets. She wanted to do it because you couldn’t.
In August, she started telling me almost every day that the Patriots would get to the Super Bowl. That I would be there to cover them. That we’d go to the Super Bowl together. How she found that optimism in the worst year of her life, I’ll never know, but I think she manifested the whole thing. Even with Brady suspended for four games (Pats went 3–1 with a rookie quarterback playing the majority of snaps) and even with Rob Gronkowski suffering a season-ending injury in November, yeah, the Pats did go to the Super Bowl.
You would have had mixed feelings about the game. First, let me tell what you have loved. Amy, Tico and I sitting down to dinner the night before the game and for the first time in nearly a year talking about you in a happy way. We told stories. We smiled. We laughed. You especially would have loved the Falcons going up 28–3 in the third quarter. You probably would have hated the idea that the Patriots could have won this game, but in the end you have would have respected the impossible result. Dude, it became the greatest Super Bowl ever.
Julian Edelman then made a catch that combined Tyree, Kearse and Neo from the Matrix. Time stopped. It happened. I saw it.
The Patriots scored 25 unanswered points to tie. They needed two 2-point conversions to even the score. As my friend Matt put it, that’s like needing to win a scratch-off to pay the rent. With a 28–20 lead and less than 4 minutes left, the Falcons made a horrible game-management decision. They should’ve run. They passed, and they kept New England in the game. Julian Edelman then made a catch that combined Tyree, Kearse and Neo from the Matrix. Time stopped. It happened. I saw it. The goddamn Super Bowl went to overtime. Patriots won the flip, and eight plays later, James White ran into the end zone. Greatest game I ever saw. You got me there. Obviously, I’d trade it back for you in a second.
You and I need to be fighting it out on Facebook. All of us need to know what you think of American Democracy right now. The election? Well, Hillary and Trump were the nominees, which as far you’re concerned meant America had already lost. I’d tell you about the general election and the months that followed. But that’s a conversation for another time, my friend
Dave Brown is a freelance writer and attorney from Boston. His good friend, Nick Talarico, died unexpectedly on February 25, 2016, leaving a void for anyone who knew him.
