I think this will be my last post on Matt for a while. Yesterday was the funeral service for Matt at the ballpark. My friends came to pick me up and we all car pooled down to the funeral services. My other friend couldn’t go with us because he was going down with the people on the list to attend the funeral procession. Anyway, we head downtown to find police cars lining every street corner, and tons of people walking through. Unfortunately most people seemed to be heading towards the sesame street function at the US Bank arena than to the Great American Ballpark.
Western Southern was kind enough to loan their parking garage free of charge to everyone attending Matt’s funeral, and we were able to get a parking spot just inside. From there we walked, and I hobbled mostly to the ballpark. Within just a few minutes of getting to the gate I spotted my friend Brian waiting in line with his girlfriend. They let us sneak up to the front, I lead the way because of the crutch, and we reunited as a completed friend-group since the end of high school. We’ve all remained friends, but over the years have segmented into several factions. Right now it’s kind of a weird semi-triangular combination with about two friends per edge.
We didn’t see many people from our class of 2001 but it didn’t really matter. With the exception of one other person we had almost every one of Matt’s long time friends all together to honor him. Justin and his wife were not there at that point because they were coming down in the procession. Turns out the processional people had a hell of a time because of the lack of notice, lack of complete planning, and lack of adequate bus travel. Turns out most people ‘on the list’ didn’t know it. Only 88 out of the 100 people showed up, which irks me, but it was pretty crappy. Had we not gone over to talk to Keith the night before Justin would have never known whether he was on the list officially or not.
There were several beautiful moments through the funeral where we all started to shed tears. Showing the pictures of Matt and the homecoming song playing chocked me up so I had to bite my tongue the whole remaining procession to keep from losing it. What made it worse was since all his friends were together we were sharing our stories, the funniest ones, and we all just tried to deal with reality.
Stories were told ranging from the truck tire story, Matt and I rolling Brian down his street inside of a giant roll of black sewer tubing, Matt coming into school each morning, and how he had his toilet he referred to as his office. Each morning he’d coming, do his ‘business’ in the office, and then we’d go to class. We talked about how Brian had to write the ‘asking out’ letter he gave to his first girlfriend. I refer to her as wet-willie because she’d used to get Matt in a headlock, and totally give him a wet-willie. I remember sitting through one of her games with Matt up at the top of the bleachers. We remembered how each day we’d move his trash talking toilet and fake poop log in his trunk to see whether he’d notice. He always did. We laughed about how he’d used to leave his Nova with the windows down, and car key in the ignition while we’d go to the mall. He’d tell us he’d always have his fingers crossed the car would get stolen, it never was.
We recalled the short story Matt wrote as part of a competition at our school where he won a small scholarship. The school had him read it at a school assembly, and we remembered how embarrassed he was to read it. Like a trooper he went up on stage and read it. Turns out it was very good, I think there was a dog in it, and in the end to keep up impressions we still ragged him.
I remember the funniest thing, and I forgot to tell them. It was back when Matt and I were going to the Park to run every other day. I wasn’t exactly in my top physical form back then so I’d run about half a mile and have to walk a little ways. I was running with Matt, who also hated to run, so it made me feel better about life, but Matt ran off ahead. It was at this point some hot girl sitting on a bench stands up, and starts to run up to me. I see her doing this and I’m puttering along in my giggly glory. She comes up and starts keeping pace with me. I kind of look at her, and I say hello. She starts talking to me, we hit it off, and while walking around we get to each other pretty well after cornering the first lap. To fool her friends who were also there and Matt we started talking about the type of china we’d have if we got married. So Matt comes to lap me and realizes I’m running with a girl, and he just kind of stops cold. His expression was hilarious. That’s kind of my story, but I thought it was hilarious because she didn’t run with the ‘hot’ guy she ran with the giggly slow guy.
I can’t possibly write all the experiences I’ve had with Matt. I can’t possibly sum the existence of a person up in a few short paragraphs. I don’t always have hilarious stories about Matt. Some of the best stories about Matt come with his just standing there talking to us all. I can’t say that I’ve ranked Matt above all my other friends either. I have a very limited number of true friends. The group I’ve had since elementary school, the ones I used to play tag with, stayed in contact through college with, and Matt was one of them. I think I’d be this distraught if any of them passed away, but what makes Matt special is the way that he lived and died. Matt wasn’t a victim of a car accident, he wasn’t found overdosed, and by god he certainly didn’t to choose what happened to him.
I know yesterday’s ceremony was beautiful, there were parts I didn’t agree with, and in particular revolved around certain individuals describing Matt’s entrance into the army. In particular was Sgt. Durham’s description of his entrance. Durham could have described the time he bet Matt 50$ to take a huge bite of one of the peppers the Sgt grew in his garden. Matt took a huge bite, chewed it up, and ate it. He then asked for his 50$, and no more than a few seconds afterwards starting prancing around like a kid having to pee with burning in his mouth. The boy needed some water stat. The description of Matt going into the recruiter’s office wasn’t exactly as described, actually it was totally wrong, but I guess that doesn’t matter. The most moving part was his brothers and sister sharing their memories. I guess that is enough for now. I think everything was said that needed to be said yesterday.
I think I’ll wrap this last posting up by saying good bye. It was great knowing you Matt. I really regret that the year I left for Arizona when I turned 18 hadn’t happened because who knows what more memories we’d have. I was only gone a year, but a lot of things took place in that year. God bless, and welcome back home.