Bereavement

I still cannot sleep.
I checked my blood sugar, and thankfully it was okay. I also took my blood pressure medication on schedule last night because I anticipated my BP might go higher than usual from all this stress. Physically, I seem to be holding up. Emotionally, that is another story. So here I am again, writing. Writing seems to be one of the few things that works for me right now. When my thoughts become unbearable, I put them into words. Somehow, once they become sentences and paragraphs, they seem a little less chaotic.
What I am grieving tonight isn't only Jim. I am also grieving all the hopes, plans, and assumptions I had built around him. I really thought Jim would remain my best friend until the end of my days. I had already imagined my future. If I eventually decided to spend more time in the Philippines, Jim would remain here in the United States. He would live in my house, watch over it, and help manage things while I was away. I could stay in the Philippines for months and return whenever I felt like it, and Jim would be here. That was simply how I imagined things. Funny how we make plans involving other people without realizing that life has never promised us their continued presence. Now that entire picture of the future has disappeared overnight.
Sometimes I think I am being overly dramatic about his death. If our situations were reversed, would Jim be this devastated over losing me? I don't know. Maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn't. But I know myself. I care. Perhaps sometimes I care too much, and maybe that is why this hurts so badly.
Still, I am trying to find something positive in what happened. Jim apparently did not suffer for very long. Whatever happened seems to have happened quickly. There was no prolonged hospitalization, no months or years of terrible disability, no long period of waiting for death. That gives me some comfort. I had actually worried about Jim's future because he was getting older without much financial security. He worked and earned money, but I knew the housing and stability I provided made his life considerably easier. Had he lived into old age, perhaps government assistance would have helped him somehow.
His health concerned me even more. His chain-smoking and periods of heavy beer drinking seemed to worsen as he aged. Sometimes I thought he was completely out of control. I imagined those habits eventually leading to a stroke, heart disease, a major procedure, or some other serious illness. Strangely, I never really imagined death. In my mind, Jim would somehow live approximately as long as I did. Another assumption.
I keep thinking about his chest pain. I told him he should go to the emergency room, and he snapped at me as though I were stupid for suggesting it. That memory bothers me now. Part of me is angry with him. Why didn't you go, Jim? Why couldn't you listen? Why couldn't you stop smoking? Why couldn't you control the drinking? But then I realize these questions no longer have answers. I can argue with him all night inside my head, but he isn't here to argue back. And perhaps I shouldn't pretend that I know exactly what was happening inside him. I don't know whether he understood how serious his symptoms were. I don't know whether he was afraid, stubborn, in denial, or simply thought the problem would pass. I will never know.
Only a few days ago, he was talking about Rocky and what would happen to the dog if something happened to him. That conversation feels eerie now. Rocky is old and severely debilitated himself. I knew I couldn't realistically take care of him. My own limitations and my lack of experience caring for a pit bull made that responsibility too much for me, regardless of how close I had become to him lately. Now Rocky has been taken to animal rescue. I don't even want to think about him right now. Too much has disappeared from this house at once.
And yet here I remain, living inside the same space Jim and I shared for more than six years. How am I supposed to stop thinking about him when practically everything around me reminds me that he was here? It hasn't even been twenty-four hours. Interestingly, I am not crying very much. I don't know why. Perhaps I am still in shock.
My sister's death last year was completely different. Her illness gave me time to prepare. I knew where things were going. I had time to process the possibility of losing her before she finally passed peacefully in hospice. Jim gave me none of that preparation. His death simply arrived. It punched me in the gut. With my sister, there was a long preparation before death. With Jim, death came first. Now comes the long process of teaching my heart what has already happened.
I keep reminding myself tonight that this is not the time to make major decisions. I shouldn't suddenly change my life because I am hurting. I shouldn't make impulsive choices simply because I desperately want to feel something other than grief. I know those old tendencies. Years ago, when my sister was suddenly hospitalized because of diabetes complications and we later learned about her cancer, I didn't know what to do with myself. I remember walking back and forth through the park at night. I wanted to see somebody, talk to somebody, find somebody—anything to keep my brain occupied.
For a moment tonight, that old instinct returned. I got into the car and drove around briefly. I wasn't really looking for anything. I simply wanted movement. I wanted different scenery. I wanted my brain to forget Jim for a few minutes. It didn't work. So I came home. I called my sister back home. Then I wrote, and wrote, and wrote some more.
Eventually, I had to lie down because my back needed rest. Between walking, gardening, sitting for long periods, and carrying all this emotional tension, my body had already done enough for one day. I tried watching The Lord of the Rings while lying in bed, but I couldn't concentrate. My eyes were watching the screen while my mind was somewhere else, so I returned to writing.
Thankfully, writing is something I can do almost indefinitely. Maybe I'll return to computer programming too. Programming forces my brain to concentrate on logic and problem-solving. That might be useful during the coming days. And, of course, there is social media.
I often laugh at my cousin because he seems capable of posting himself on Facebook throughout the entire day. But tonight I find myself thinking about him differently. His life isn't easy. He has financial limitations. His children have struggles of their own. He continues working even at 66. He has experienced a mild stroke. And last year, he lost his only son to a massive heart attack. Yet there he is—still working, still posting, still smiling, still living.
Obviously, I don't know what happens when the camera is turned off. Social media never tells the entire story. He may have private moments of grief that nobody sees. But he keeps going. Tonight, that gives me hope. Human beings somehow survive things they once believed they could never survive. I hope that will also be true for me.
Then my mind starts bargaining again. What if six years ago I had refused to help Jim after he was kicked out of his temporary apartment? Maybe he would have gone to Arizona. Maybe I would never have heard from him again. Then I wouldn't be sitting here tonight grieving him. Or I can go even farther back. What if I had never approached him in the park around 2011? What if I had simply walked past him? No Jim. No friendship. No six years together. No grief tonight.
But that isn't really a fair bargain, because if I remove tonight's pain, I also have to remove those six years. Would I really choose that? Probably not.
Thinking about Jim makes me remember the other people I met more than fifteen years ago. Some were young men who later died. I heard about overdoses. One died from cirrhosis. Others simply disappeared. I don't even know where Joey is now, or James. I hope they survived homelessness, addiction, COVID, and everything else life threw at them.
But Jim was different. Jim stayed. That may be the simplest explanation for why his death hurts so much: he stayed. For more than six years, we shared a house and gradually developed a real friendship.
Yes, Jim benefited from my help. I gave him stable housing and allowed his dog to stay here. There were periods when months passed without him being able to pay his share of the household expenses. Eventually, I stopped making a big issue out of it. Somewhere along the way, I realized that Jim was giving me something too: presence, companionship, another human being in the house. Someone I could talk to when I wanted to talk, but who didn't require constant conversation. Sometimes we barely spoke, yet there was comfort simply in knowing he was somewhere in the house.
Perhaps financially the arrangement favored Jim more than it favored me. I didn't mind, because, strangely enough, Jim taught me something I had rarely experienced before. He taught me what friendship could feel like. For six years, I managed to live under the same roof with another man without sex being part of the relationship. That sounds so simple when I write it down, but for me, it represents an important lesson.
Jim and I didn't even have much in common. We had different personalities, different habits, different interests, and different ways of looking at life. Yet we learned how to live together. More importantly, I learned how to respect him simply as another human being.
When I think about some of my younger years—the driving around, wandering through parks, meeting strangers and homeless men, looking for company—I can now recognize that loneliness, attraction, companionship, and sexual desire sometimes became tangled together in my mind. Jim helped me untangle them. He taught me that I don't have to possess someone in order to care about him. I don't have to turn another person into an object of desire before deciding that he is worth knowing. Men, just like women, want dignity and respect. Sometimes a friend can simply be a friend. Nothing more.
Maybe that is one of the greatest things Jim left me. Not money, not property, not some grand inheritance. A lesson.
For six years, I experienced ordinary companionship with another human being. We lived together. We disagreed. We irritated each other. We helped each other. Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we didn't. But every night, I knew Jim was somewhere nearby. And now I realize how precious something so ordinary can become.
Tonight the house is quiet. Jim's room is still there. His belongings are still there. Everything looks almost exactly as it did before. Only Jim is missing. Perhaps that is why my mind cannot completely understand what happened yet. The physical world hasn't caught up with the reality of his death. His things remain where he left them, almost as though he might walk through the door again. But he won't.
I don't know when I will be able to enter his room comfortably. I don't know when I will stop expecting to hear him somewhere in the house. I don't know when remembering him will stop hurting this much. And tonight, maybe I don't need those answers. I only need to get through tonight.
Jim wasn't merely someone I helped. In his own imperfect way, he helped me too. I gave him stability. He gave me companionship. And perhaps most importantly, he taught me that genuine friendship can exist without possession, romance, similarity, or shared interests. Sometimes friendship is simply two people learning to respect each other and remaining present in each other's lives.
Jim remained present in mine for six years. Now I have to learn how to carry that friendship as a memory.
The house is quiet, but my mind isn't. So I will keep writing until eventually exhaustion wins and sleep comes. Maybe tomorrow will be a little easier.
For tonight, this is enough.
2026-08-07 20:49:53
shortstories