Poop Shute

My "Family"

I have known John Roland since we were very small, and times were happier. Brian Young and Nick Gorodenski I met later, but once the four of us were all together, we quickly became nearly inspeparable. Nick and Brian, and by extension their respective mothers, came into my life at a time when I had a very unpleasant home life. As a result, I spent a great deal of my time at their houses. We would go through spells. A period of a few months would see us practically living at Brian's. Then the next few months would be spent at Nick's. It was a cyclical thing. Currently, I seem to be suffering from a great deal of nostalgia for Nick's house.

At a time when I had no sense of home, Nick and Marita and Chico gave me one. And I never felt like a guest there. It was my home too, and I was always welcome there. And they did everything to make it feel that way at every turn for all us boys. From the occasional "be careful" when we went out, or the urging to wear a jacket in cooler weather, to the fact that they always kept the fridge stocked with sodas and Tropicana Twisters and frozen pizzas for us.

I used to joke that God made up for the fact that I didn't have a strong father figure by blessing me with a dozen mothers. Marita was one of those. Funnily, her husband Chico was never really a father figure for me though. That doesn't mean I loved or respected him any less. No, it had more to do with his bearing and the way he talked to us. He was always a peer, despite the age difference. He loved to spend time with us discussing the merits of a video game, or extolling the virtues of his favorite fantasy novel. He not only shared our interests, but he talked to us as an equal, not as an authority figure.

We were a strange family, and I don't think most of us would have used that word at the time, but as the dust clears, I can see now that we were just that. A family. Five young, headstrong boys (yes, I'm including Chico) and their loving, nurturing matriarch. Those boys were just as much brother to me as Jon Moore is. No more, no less.

Last week the world suffered a great loss with the passing of Marita McQueen. When my adopted brothers and I came together to say goodbye to her there was a glimmer of the way it used to be. We were there for something terrible, and tragic, but it felt like Marita's last act was to reunite us again and remind us of that "family" that we had seemed to have left behind. There were moments that I felt like maybe we could even go forward together. I still want to, but in the end I think maybe I was alone in that feeling. It was a fleeting thing we had, and some, it would seem, would rather let it go.

Marita was one of the sweetest and kindest people I have ever known, and I will carry that sense of belonging and of family that she gave me for the rest of my life. I'm not quite sure what I believe happens in the afterlife, but I know that if there is any sort of reward/punishment system that Marita is sitting pretty on a cloud somewhere watching over us. And smiling. Forever smiling.

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Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live
in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love
and live that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they
see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is
the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet
their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present,
because immortal.

William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude