Chris

Recently we (Mr. Sparxs and I) had a friend of ours pass away due to what we think is a drug overdose.  Chris was a phenomenally creative loving beautiful person when he was not using.  He was the way I met my husband; him being my next door neighbor and my husband was his boss.  This was all before he cultivated his addiction.

He introduced me to some of the most intriguing and beautiful things that I love in my life now.  He was into art and the same music that I am.  He brought us to a Death Cab for Cutie concert, showed me Audrey Kawasaki’s art one late night while we were all hanging out at his apartment, countless little snippets of funny things on the internet or just in real life.  His outlook on life was truly unique.

I remember the late nights of playing Risk while Sarah and I had to keep him and my husband from killing each other over a board game.  How after an extremely intense evening the boys didn’t speak to each other for two weeks.  The countless cook outs, glasses of wine, and intense Mario Kart tournaments in the college apartments that we met at.

The first night I met Chris, I liked him.  I actually thought he was really cute and had a curiosity crush on him.  As the weeks waned by that morphed into a friendship and I shortly after met my to-be husband; but he continued to be an integral part of my life.  My husband and I spent almost every weekend hanging out with him and Sarah.  We had years filled with weekends looking at art, talking about vacations we could not afford, things we wanted to do with our life after school.  There are so many times that we shared our dreams with each other on the small porches of our apartments.  There were times when we all drank a little too much, stayed up way to late pasted the time of reason, but just enjoyed being alive and choosing to share that time with each other.  We shared years of our life with him.  Part of me feels responsible for his death.  I know my husband is riddled with guilt.  The question if he could have done more, stopped him, gotten him to really get help as appose to act as though he were going through the motions while continuing to fall into the spiral of addiction.  We knew that he were using when he were lying to Sarah about it.  We didn’t do anything.  We knew when he were lying to everyone else.  I know my husband more than myself babysat him to make he did not die in a sedated state some nights. 

I have only had very sparing conversations with my husband about this since his death.  They had a falling out, well really it was long drawn out point to where my husband just could not take being around the drug abuse anymore.  He feels guilty for not being there.  Feels like he was an anchor to Chris and that maybe if he was there it would have changed the eventual outcome.  I do not know if it would have changed anything, maybe make the heart ache of losing him more profound.