My Friend’s Front Lawn

My best friend from high school died on December 16, 2008. He was the “Chandler Bing” of our friend group—charming, charismatic, witty, and wildly fun. But he was also our “Matthew Perry,” struggling deeply with mental health and addiction. After many years battling manic depression and substance abuse, he died by suicide, like my father, with a handgun—like too many people I’ve loved and lost.

I was a 24-year-old paralegal in Midtown Manhattan at Wachtell Lipton when I found out. I screamed into my fists, fell to my knees, and threw the receiver of my work phone to the floor. I called my co-worker, who was working on a project with me, and sobbed into the phone that I had to leave—my friend had died. Before I could gather my thoughts, that co-worker ran down from his office and bear-hugged me around my shoulders as I sobbed and gasped for air, hunched over in my chair. It was the hardest I’d cried since my dad had died 15 years earlier.

I loved my friend. He was the closest man to me since my father, and he had been there for me when I struggled with depression. We’d talk whenever we got low. I had slow ups and downs; he had fast highs and lows.

My friend’s dad had died before we met in high school, and it was unclear if his death was suicide or an accident. My friend and I shared the experience of losing a father and the darkness that could come with that loss—the hate, the anger, the pain. Together, we weren’t alone in those feelings, and they eased. People need people in this world, especially in moments like those.

I wish—and we all wished—we could have helped our friend better, but we didn’t know how. His manic depression took him to places we couldn’t follow. His self-hate became self-destruction, and eventually, even I had to give him space. Though I wanted to help him, it felt best for both of us.

I felt guilty that, in some way, we, his friends, were at fault. Growing up, using tobacco and alcohol was just what our community did in Texas. Later in high school, when we experimented beyond those boundaries, our friend binged. I had a family history of addiction, so I stayed within more acceptable vices. For him, though, even the “acceptable” vices became problematic or weren’t enough.

My friend went to rehab several times, often after major setbacks. He’d been particularly self-destructive the last time he went in. Our friend group stayed in touch less and less after college. He had met a girl in treatment, and although he graduated from a different college than he’d started, and a few semesters later than expected, he did graduate. He was proud of having stayed on track as long as he had that time, but I could tell he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He didn’t believe he could stay on track, which is a feeling familiar to many people who seek help for addiction.

The last time we talked, I was living in Queens and just starting as a paralegal. He joked that if I ever started rooting for the Yankees over the Astros, he’d hate me forever. I still promise, I never will.

Several years before he took his own life, just after high school, I remember standing with him on his front lawn in the rain after a night out. He cried and yelled, “I have a gun,” he said. “It’s my dad’s revolver. I played Russian roulette last night. I am so fucking unhappy I don’t know what to do.” His tears blended with the rain, but the grief in his heart was unmistakable. I grabbed his broad frame and hugged him with everything I had, hoping he’d feel my love and know that I never wanted him to leave this earth. “You’ll be okay. You will. You need to be happy. You need to find that place. I love you, man. Never, never do that again. It’s normal to think dark thoughts, but you can’t go there.” He sobbed into my shoulder on that front lawn, where we used to throw a lacrosse ball. His house was perfectly manicured. You’d never guess such heartache resided within.

I checked in on him for a long time after that night, and eventually, he seemed okay again. He went back to college. Then he fell again and went to treatment again, sobered up again, and eventually relapsed again.

I knew the shame he felt for his feelings. He chose his path, and he went where I had begged him not to go on that rainy night in his front yard. It was his path, just as it was my dad’s. He left us with another loss of someone incredible gone too soon. It hurt deeply and left an impression on so many of our friends.

In those years together, he was the closest person I ever let into my pain. He shaped my life more than almost any other friend. I am a better man because of him, pain and all. I am who I am because of him, pain and all. I will forever love and miss you, my friend.