“Sorry, Owen, I don’t know where to start,” I explain.
“No worries, it’s not like we’re wasting tape, right?” He gestures toward his new Panasonic DVX 200 camera and grins at me. “Digital.”
“Can you remind me of some of the questions again? Wait, is it okay for me to ask you stuff or will that ruin your take?”
“That’s what editing’s for, bro. We’re cool.”
I’m at Owen’s house, being interviewed for his documentary about us forming the Gatekeepers. Or, I would be giving an interview if I could wrap my mind around something to say. “This is harder than I thought,” I explain.
“I hear that, totally feel you. With me, after Braden? I shut down hardcore. Had trouble getting out more than a word or two. I could not deal. The idea of having a whole conversation would just knock the wind out of me, so I retreated into myself. I was an island. Like, I know Simone wanted to talk, but I just couldn’t so I pushed her away. Pushed everyone away. I wanted to be inside my head where it was quiet. Wasn’t until the folks brought me to therapy that I even started having conversations again.”
While Owen didn’t lose his best friend, we’ve both experienced a high level of trauma, so I ask him, “Does the guilt go away? Will it get better?”
He considers my question and answers, “Yes and no. Mostly, it’ll get different. For now, you hold on to that, okay?”
I nod. Because I feel like I should be saying something, I tell him, “Your room isn’t what I remember. Like, your books are alphabetized and sorted by type. Don’t remember you being Mr. Dewey Decimal system. Didn’t we used to joke about using hip-waders to plow through all your mess?”
I was shocked to see how neat and precise everything in here is, with each of his old medals and trophies arranged just so, and different quadrants of the room earmarked for every hobby/interest. We’re sitting in the filmmaking portion, but there are also separate areas for playing music, for doing homework, for reading, and for gaming. I somehow remember him living like a bear, with empty pizza boxes for end tables and stacks upon stacks of dirty clothes, but that’s not the case at all.
“‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ Or, ‘For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned,’” he replies. “That’s some Ben Franklin realness for you. I wasn’t always tidy like this. Sorta used to live like a bear.”
I laugh. “That’s what I thought.”
“Yeah, it was full-blown chaos up in here. But after Braden, I needed to feel like I had some measure of control, like I could look at one thing in my life and go, ‘Uh-huh, that’s exactly how it should be,’ so I started with my room. Felt like if I could get my surroundings straightened out, then maybe there was hope the rest of my life would follow suit. Honestly? I kinda let this place be a wreck for so long because I wanted my folks to pay attention.”
I’m awed by Owen’s ability to be so open, so free about how he feels. I envy him. I now understand why Stephen used to fume about him in his speech class, not because Owen did anything wrong, but because I bet he showed the kind of confidence in his convictions that we lacked.
I make a tentative stab at opening up. “Opposite problem over here. If you recall, mine are real focused on me, especially my mom. That’s where Stephen and I bonded. He and I used to tell these jokes...” I trail off, suddenly feeling like I’ve taken a cannonball to the gut when I realize this is one more thing he and I will never do together again. Dad was right. Here I was, feeling okay, and now I’m overtaken with another tsunami of grief.
“You used to do what?” Owen prompts.
“Nah, it’s dumb.”
“I doubt that, but you do you.”
We sit in silence for a minute before it occurs to me that the best way to memorialize Stephen is to verbalize why he was my brother.
“In junior high, we used to spend hours coming up with ‘yo mama’ jokes. They were sorta stupid but we’d crack ourselves up. Stephen’s were always hilarious. My favorite one was, ‘Yo mama so mean that Taylor Swift wrote a song about her.’”
Owen laughs appreciatively. “That’s awesome.”
“You know what sucks? I came up with one he’d have loved when my mom was following me around, stressing about what I should wear to his funeral.”
When I got dressed that morning, I noticed the drycleaner had shrunk my suit pants. They were a good two inches too short, so I wanted to wear khakis and a sports coat, but my mother wasn’t having it. She made me put on the suit anyway because she said I couldn’t show up to the service all Casual Friday.
I’m reliving every emotion from that day. I was furious at my mom, but angrier at myself, for worrying about trivial stuff like my outfit. More than anything, I was afraid. Afraid to go to the service because I wasn’t sure I could handle it.
“There I was, getting ready so we could go bury my best friend and all I could think of was ‘Yo mama so stupid that when I told her pi-r-squared, she replied, no, they’re round.’ Kept thinking, the only person who’d love this is gone.”
“I’m real sorry for your loss. Stephen was pretty fly.”
I nod and swallow hard, keeping myself from busting out the waterworks. Again. Swear to God, it’s like I’ve turned into a Very Special episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians lately.
Owen suggests, “How ’bout I make you a deal? How ’bout the next time you come up with a joke, text it to me. That’ll be, like, your mini-tribute to him, letting your tradition live on.”
“Thank you.”
“De nada mi amigo, sería un honor.”
“Wait, you took Spanish?” I ask. “Weren’t you in my Mandarin class?”
Owen shrugs. “Taught myself. Figured I’m more likely to bartend in Costa Rica than Beijing.”
“The fact that you’re doing stuff like making movies and teaching yourself languages tells me that your future entails more than just opening cervezas for people.”
When he nods, the beads on the end of his hair bang together. “You make a good point.”
We’re both quiet for a minute, but it’s a comfortable silence.
“Hey, Owen?”
“Yo.”
“I’m ready to do my interview.”
“Cool...except I never actually stopped filming. Digital, bro. Got a ton of footage already.”
“Oh,” I say. “Can you still ask me a question, though?”
“You got it. How ’bout...how are you?”
I reply, “That seems like too easy a question.”
“Is it? You could always answer, ‘fine,’ or ‘good,’ and then we could move on to something else. Or you could let it sit for a minute, let it marinate, and then tell me if that’s how you really are. Take your time, it’s digital. ‘It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.’ That’s Confucius, by the way.”
I sit quietly, pondering the question. “Okay... How am I? Um...you know what? Not fine. I keep telling everyone I’m fine but that’s a lie,” I reply.