Michelle

I found out I lost another friend to drugs today. This one was an angel from a previous lifetime.

She had the most high-maintenance boyfriend in the world at the time (the guy who called me this morning, who’s been sober for years now), and she persevered through years of life-as-performance-art with a Zen-like calm.

Her memorial service is today, in a city hundreds of miles away.

Ten years ago, she was dancing with my friend near the end of the video below, like it was the Nelson Riddle Orchestra serenading them instead of Hell’s House Band.

My friend expressed regret today that he hadn’t “made amends” with her yet, right after telling me how they had kept in touch over the years, sending texts on each others’ birthdays and being there to catch her when she fell.

I told him he may not have said the words, but every act of kindness over the years was its own amends. There was obviously no rift between he and Michelle at the time of her passing, so nothing needed to be amended.

Then I told him about Steve, and what a shitty week it’s been and how drugs were not picky. They took all comers and he and I were lucky to get out with our asses intact.

Watch the last couple minutes of the clip. We lost an angel this week.