Three Minutes

A few days after the incident at the tennis courts (those tennis courts, months later, would also be the site of the first and only time I saw someone literally loose a testicle on the fence surrounding it, if you don't know the story, remind me sometime and I will tell it, as gingerly as possible of course) Russell's seat in first period English class was empty. I really didn't think anything of it at the time, he had been through enough lately and if he was sick, it was understandable. After English I saw a girl in the hallways who lived a few doors down from Russell, she stopped me in the hall and asked if I had heard about Russell's sister. I told her I had not. That was how I found out she had died. I didn't wait for Russell to come back to school to hear from him what had happened, as soon as I got home I called his house. He answered the phone and I realized I had no idea what to say. Then I remembered what he had told me "Just be my friend."
"Russell, man, it's Chris, look I know you probably don't feel like talking but if you need anything or want to talk to someone, just call."
I didn't want to bother him anymore as I started to feel a little bit embarrassed by the fact that my morbid curiosity was more of the reason I called than out of concern for him and his father.
"That's all I wanted to tell you. Bye." As I started to take the phone from my ear he said "Thanks. I'll be in school Monday." And then we hung up. Now the cold bastard in me, even back then it occasionally reared its ugly head, starting assessing the situation and came up with one solid fact: A mother dying from cancer merited almost two weeks from school, a sister who commits suicide only a few days. But I was in no position to judge. Russell wasn't in school on Monday after all, nor was I, as they had decided the funeral would be held on Monday. I went along with about a dozen other kids I went to school with. The funeral was as most funerals are; sad, morbid, and painfully long. What made this one different was the conversation I had with Russell for a few minutes outside of the funeral home. The funeral was at Bradley's funeral home, some of you might know where that is and it's not important to the story now that I think about it, but anyway, we went outside and Russell motioned for me to sneak around back with him. I figured that meant we were going to have a smoke. We lit our Parliament Lights that Russell supplied and I noticed my friend was more himself than he had been in the last month. He wasn't taking his sisters passing as hard as he had his mothers apparently, then I noticed something even more shocking, Russell was pissed.
"Can't believe the stupid bitch did it." He told me.
"What?" I asked, not believing what I had just heard.
"Kill herself, that was stupid." Russell even began to laugh a little now. Still unbelieving, I remained silent. "She said she was going to do it and I told her she was an idiot to think about it. Said she didn't want to live without mom around."
"Wow, that's rough.", was all I could muster to say.
"I know she took Mom dying and all hard but did she think I didn't?" Russell flicked his cigarette into the tall scrub grass that grew in the back of the funeral parlor where his dead sisters body was lying. "I told her she needed to get a grip and get some help, and not the kind of help that comes from pills in a little orange bottle either, but she didn't listen. She never did"
I was getting uncomfortable with the conversation but I had to stand there and listen, that's what a friend does after all, right?
"She left a note." Russell informed me next. "Sorry Daddy, blah blah blah, I miss Mommy, and I want to go be with her. Blah blah blah." Was basically how the note read , Russell is good at paraphrasing.
"Jesus, Russell, that sucks." I was good at stating the obvious.
"Yeah especially since she won't be seeing Mom now. You don't get there by killing yourself." Russell started to walk back to the front of the funeral parlor. "She was stupid, and selfish. And now I gotta bury her." Russell had grown up more than should be expected of anyone his age in the past few months. I didn't know what this meant for our friendship. As I said, I wouldn't get long to find out either. Two weeks after we finished school for the year, Russell's father was told by his superior officer that he was being reassigned to Texas. On July 5, 1984 Russell and his father moved out of the yellow house in Alluvium Lakes, and out of New Jersey. We said we would write, and for a while, we did. I don't know if it was him or me that failed to eventually respond to the others letter, but it doesn't matter at this point. Now over twenty years later Russell is/was a distant memory. Very distorted, and very foggy. Sort of like the camera angles at this years Superbowl (thanks CBS!). Then a weird set of circumstances led me to Lakeview cemetery in Cherry Hill during the late summer of last year. A coworker's mother died and I went to the funeral. I ended up going to the grave site as well. During part of the funeral at the cemetery, I noticed we were just a few graves down from where Russell's mother and sister were buried. That's when I started to remember all of this story, and none of this would have appeared on my blog, except for the fact that a few minutes after we had all decided it was time to do the "drop the flower on the coffin thing", I saw someone who I thought I recognized standing a little bit away from the group and was near other graves.
It was Russell.
We talked for a while, exchanged phone numbers (he move back out here two years ago, well kind of near here, West Chester Pa. to be exact), hugged and then went on with our day. As I walked back to my car I thought of what a weird coincidence that was, sometimes you're just meant to be somewhere I guess. I gave one last glance back to Russell and the pair of graves. A large bouquet of flowers was on the grave to my left, his mothers grave. On his sisters there was one single rose. For Russell, I guess, some things are hard to forgive.