I don't really want to write this, but I'm compelled to out of respect for the Dead.
I've had an irritating clusterfuck of thoughts, feelings, and memories flooding my head since learning a couple hours ago that Caleb(Dugoboy) had passed away. This post isn't just about Dugoboy, but also survivors, and the inherent disconnect the Internet so readily lands between you and others you may have otherwise never met.
I knew Caleb would be passing on, but I unlearned this horrible knowledge and temporarily forgot about him.
Why did I do that?
Seeing the announcement of his funeral on his myspace page brought a heated rush of blood to my face, physical shame and guilt plain to be seen. I was confused, embarrassed at work, and felt a wall of suppressed but still recent history unearth itself.
Caleb's death brought back a recent but fortunately now past crisis my Wife went through the last 4 years.
She's also the main reason I forgot about Caleb.
How does that work?
I met Caleb on the old RI ez-board. I was impressed with his intelligence and energy to plod through our discussions. He was a very bright individual. We had common views on many things, and exchanged many private messages. I enjoyed talking to him, but time and circumstances were frequently pressing, although I tried best I could to maintain my end of a healthy friendship.
Things at that time were in the middle of the darkest days in my marriage. My Wife had a substantial addiction problem that was extremely self-destructive. This was aggravated by an incurable illness latent in her body I was terrified would rise up and take her should she not meet her end violently in the process of indulging her addiction.
I tried everything I could to help her, educate her, protect her from herself. I put shotguns in the faces of drug dealers. I did everything possible, but every attempt on my part was futile as she simply wasn't ready to give up the abuse. Indeed, she embraced it so boldly at times I had many times over lost faith she would ever break free.
Caleb asked me two Summers back to speak with him via instant messenger. I don't usually use chat programs, but I could see he needed to talk. We didn't discuss anything significant, but his need for conversation was seemingly insatiable, and I had to break contact frequently as I had work to do or was at home managing our own disaster.
I didn't know then that he was very ill.
As a matter of fact, I didn't know anything about it same as everyone else until he took a prompt from me when I was discussing to a degree here the issues my Wife was facing. That period was the absolute worst of it; our home had been broken and we were scattered with a very uncertain future. I was told that she had likely triggered what could soon prove to be a fatal response by her illness to the abuse she placed her body under. I was pretty broken up; my Wife had just gone on the worst drug binge of her life and had stated it was the big one she didn't mean to come back from. Despite being an atheist, I marvel at the chain of events that led to her being able to get help, and most of all, her willingness to finally accept it.
We were separated for more than 8 months. It was during that time that Caleb let the board know about his own illness. I know I gave him my fullest support, but I can't recall our conversations. I was very upset constantly then, and in December of 2006 lost over 40 pounds in one month from stress. Through this Caleb tried to maintain contact with me, but I kept being forced to put off talking to him for reasons both genuine and apathetic on my part.
He left the board not long afterwards and we never communicated again.
I had the responsibility of getting a new home for my daughter and myself while my Wife was away and basically putting our world back together. These things consumed me for several months and I was not present here or much anywhere else online. Eventually, my Wife came home last year practically a new person. She graduated an extremely difficult Christian-based residential program and has stayed clean every since. My Wife's illness is in the process of reversal. The word 'Miracle' comes to mind, and I'd be really annoyed by it's inclusion in my vocabulary if it wasn't directed towards something as crushingly poignant as my Wife's life.
We've had our second child since then, and despite the difficulties of being Americans in America in 2008, things have been the best they've been since we met.
Meanwhile, brick by brick, both Misery and Joy buried Caleb's presence in my consciousness. He respected me, and said my honesty about my Wife's struggles inspired him to share his own.
And I just let him fade out after that.
I shouldn't feel guilty that my Wife overcame her darkest hours and we are free for now from a horrible oppression.
But learning of Caleb's death made me feel exactly that.
Guilty.
I was so fucking ashamed to see that despite being in his friends list on myspace I hadn't checked in on him in so long that he had been deceased since April of 2007.
Close to a fucking year has gone by.
The Internet is truly a vast and infinite place. It requires discipline to maintain connections because they are so easy to make. There are others I have met online who have died, but none as painful to experience as Caleb's. There are *so* many people that I'm acquainted with online there is no way to keep tabs on them all, and an ugly facet of the Internet is there's no built-in way of being notified about the passing of a person behind the pixels, so many times, a person dies and you just never know *what* happened to them; maybe they just moved on to a different circle, etc.
Or they died, and you were too absorbed in yourself to find out sooner.
Probably the worst example of this was my ex girlfriend. She participated in a double suicide in 2003 that I didn't learn of until 2005. I spent five years of my life with this woman and despite our parting I wanted to know she was ok and send her my well wishes. I had no way of tracking her down on the outs, so I threw her name in the internet.
Google said: Double Suicide. More than two years previous. Google even had pictures of her corpse being wheeled out of the house she overdosed in.
I know without the Internet I may have never learned she died, but there's something horrible about these delayed mournings. It doesn't feel natural. It hurts more. You aren't just in grief, but also hating yourself for not staying in touch with someone significant enough to make their deaths painful for you.
You take people for granted.
I'm not sure how to end this post, or even what it was I really wanted to say, but I'm sorry to see someone as alive as Caleb taken so young. He was a great Human Being, and as with so many others, taking his station amongst the Silent Majority leaves us with less than we had.
Didn't mean to turn my back, man.
Sleep an easy sleep,
D
