John, calling to tell me that Shawn’s friend Linda (who I believe took him to the doctor a few months ago) was with him, and said he was dying.
He called again at 2:59 to confirm — liver failure, kidney failure… While he was still conscious, he said he didn’t want life support, but he’d let John decide. John made the same decision I would have — he had them remove the breathing tube.
I decided I was flying up there, and called NovySan to tell him. He suggested I wait until I knew whether there was anything I could do — whether there’d be a memorial — whether the family was coming. (The family… John had already called one sister, and left a message. She hasn’t called back. I asked if he’d called Shawn’s brother. He didn’t recognize the name. So I found the number and left a message with Scott’s wife. She hasn’t called, either.) I called John at 3:37 and said I was going to wait. He said it didn’t look like I’d be able to get there before Shawn passed; I said I thought as much, so anything I could do up there, I’d be doing for him. Then he put the phone to Shawn’s ear, so I could tell him I loved him. I hope he could hear me.
At 4:21, I called my mother. I had to tell someone who knew him.
John called again at 6:02. He said, “He’s gone.”
At 6:06, Mom called. “I had a feeling,” she said.
She was right.
I hadn’t talked to him in more than four months. I hadn’t even told him that Lindsay, my parents’ friend, my mentor, someone he knew too, died before Burning Man. I keep asking myself why I didn’t call — and whether I would have known how sick he was if I had called. I wonder why I didn’t realize… And I feel even worse for John and his friends in Portland, who were there and still didn’t know.
I feel hollow. When I say, “Shawn’s dead,” I start to cry. But then it drifts away, because it’s real yet.
And I’m angry, too. With him, for apparently drinking himself to death at the age of 36. With myself, for not figuring out that that’s what he was doing.
Really, though, he joins my grandmother on my list of people who’ve died of depression. She treated hers with pills. He treated his with booze.
(And I hesitate to say for sure it’s the alcohol that killed him — but when I asked John, he said that was it.)
I don’t know how to say goodbye to him yet.
