When friends die: how to tell the story of the unexplainable

A collection of essays by me wouldn’t be complete without a long rambling rant about Rob. Rob was my best friend (stop me if you’ve heard this one before). More than that, he was a bit of an idol for me. For about 14 years. Which primarily meant three things in the end – I couldn’t see his drug addiction, I couldn’t see his depression, and I loved him feircly and unconditionally. Rob killed himself when I was 33 and I spent the majority of the following year, trying to understand why. I knew this was an insane task, but I’m a dramaturg – aren't I like a story expert? Isn’t that what I do for a living? This was my life. This was just a life I was analzying – I only needed the proper data. And so off on my ill fated fact finding mission I went. I made it my business to talk to all of Rob’s friends. This was no small task. Rob had this big public persona, and he was warm and generous and loud and lofty and intelligent and charming, and he was a bad ass rock and roll motherfucker as well as a gentle nature loving bird watcher type, so you see, he had attributes that attracted a wide number of people, for a broad spectrum of reasons. All these relationships, these friend groups, sort of seperated from each other, each atonomous, similar only in their adoration for the common denomonator. Later, I would understand this better. But not at first. At first I went out on my adventure. Off to sail on the ocean of Rob. And I would talk to his first London friend Toby – I'd sit in the garden with his wife Anoushka and we would remember together the days of our early 20’s - the things I didn’t remember because I wasn’t there. The things that were glanced upon, suggested, avoided, dismissed. I’d sit at a table with his brothers and cousins, listening to his aunties tell hilarious stories in the saddest of times, and confront us with the things we were too young to remember, hidden stories, whispers of inevitablity, fate, god? I got drunk (several times) with his old flatmate and friend and new york city/london professional – and we would try to sort out the intricacies of who Rob was at his most pure, his most kind, his most magnanous. I was with his wife Poorna, who knew a Rob I could never know – deep into the most ambitious levels of his love and sorrow. I even thought about meeting up with his old drug dealer and drug buddy Keith, a name I nearly forgot until just this moment and as I write it even I burn with rage and sorrow, because I wanted to know that Rob too. I wanted to understand him. As I had failed to in life. Because when a suprising thing happens, it’s suprising because you didn’t understand the situation. Understanding is possible! Peace comes with understanding! It was in Belgravia, on a cold december night, drinking too much wine with Rob’s best man Zuzi that I had my realization. Zuz had a completely different take on the situation, different than almost anyone else. And we fought bitterly about it. I sang to her loudly about compassion and forgiveness and eventually she told me to just shut up. Why was she there, she demanded of me. Why had I invited her? Why was I asking her all these questions? It was pointless. I wasn’t her friend. We were not friends. We would not be friends. We were friends with Rob. And it was all different Robs. See, addicts do this – they keep people away from each other so as to not get exposed in lies, half truths, unexplained absenses. And my search was pointless. Why didn Rob kill himself? He killed himself for all the reasons. Or none. It didn’t matter. And who was Rob in the first place? What was his story? The one you tell yourself it is. All the stories are real. We are not made to crack open peoples lives and see them clearly. We paint them a color. And that’s actually beautiful. We leave our fingerprints on everything. Nothing goes untouched.