Prologue: This is a departure from what i would normally write, but i realised recently that holding onto darkness can stop you from being what you should become, but bringing things into the light can only make things better even if it hurts. For my friend Dean, my time with you changed me and your memory makes me a better person.
Chaos Theory is the science of surprise, of the unpredictable. One of the principals of chaos is the Butterfly Effect. It’s the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at that particular moment in space and time, the hurricane would not have occurred. For almost 23 years I have lived with the fact that I was a butterfly. No way to change things, no way to turn back time. Just the guilt and the grief that comes with the words, If only. Even if you could go back, how far back do you go to avoid the final outcome?
The night I met you it was raining. Not just a little but the kind of down pour that makes everything feel fresh and new. I spotted you before you even entered the room. From inside the dark pub I saw you walk past the front window on the well-lit sidewalk and stop to check your hair. We locked eyes when you walked in. My stare must have been obvious as a friend who was with me made sure to tell me that you were a bit of a bad boy.
We talked for hours about nothing in particular. You were charming, funny and undeniably handsome. It was almost 1am when I decided to call it a night. You stood in the rain and covered me with your jacket while I waited for a cab and asked if it was alright if you came and saw me some time. ’Sure” I replied with a smile from ear to ear. It was the days before mobile phones so I took a pen from my bag and wrote my address and home number on your hand. You kissed me goodbye and the cab drove away into the night.
Home and on a high from my encounter with a handsome stranger, I showered, danced around the house for a little while with a perfectly acceptable amount of giddy 18-year-old girl excitement and then I crawled into bed. Only just beginning to drift off to sleep, I was startled by a knock at the door. I pulled the curtains back to see who was on my front step at that hour and there you stood soaking wet.
I flung open the door and before I had a chance to say anything you blurted out “You said I could come and see you sometime, is this too soon?” I thought it was sweet and also a little crazy. I pointed out It was winter and below zero outside and you walked an hour in the rain instead of just asking to get it the cab. “That would have been the easy thing to do” you said “I wanted you to see I was making an effort”. We both laughed and I told you to come inside and warm up by the fire. You stood motionless in the doorway for a minute or more then you grabbed my hand. You said “Before I come inside, I want you to know something”. You proceeded to tell me while still wet and freezing cold that you had some legal issues in the past, you went into details over the next few minutes and finished with “I’ll understand if you don’t want me to come inside”.
It was a lot of information for 2am, none of it was alarming and I found for frankness sort of charming. We sat by the fire and talked all night. I remember the sun coming up and falling asleep on your chest. I woke up on the lounge in the morning, I could hear your voice coming from the kitchen. I walked out to find you sharing a coffee with my mother who was still in her dressing gown. After some chit chat, you asked Mum if it was alright if you had a shower and once the water started to run, my Mum looked at me and smiled. She told me that when coming out for her morning cuppa, you had raced out, introduced yourself, given her the same speech you had given me and the front door but ended it with “ I’d totally understand if you don’t want me in your house, but that daughter of yours in a really nice girl”. My Mum has always had a good sense of people. Other parents looked at what someone was wearing or the family they were from to decided who people were. My mum, she looked at the person. She loved you straight away.
The next 5 years seem to go so fast. We laughed a lot. When we were together, I always had your full attention and you always made me feel special and protected. You were kind, funny and had a sense of loyalty matched by very few people. It was not a relationship that others would have understood. There were times I would see you all the time and then not for weeks on end. Being a small country town, it wasn’t unusual that drugs were always an issue that simmered on the surface. I didn’t do them, so when you were doing them a lot, I wouldn’t see you and when things were better, I would. I just understood, that’s the way it had to be. Regardless, I wanted you in my life.
The times we were apart, I came to see as a symbol of respect. Not once in the time I knew you did you ever ask me for money, even when I know you needed it. Not once did you do anything to disrespect me or my family. It just made me love you more.
Sooner than I realised, I was 23. Working 3 jobs and thinking about what there was to life outside our small country town. We had talked about going away; about being somewhere that your reputation was not such a burden. Not concrete plans just the day dreams of hopeful 20 somethings.
It was just before your 25th birthday in May and you had to go to court, over something silly. Regardless of the charges, we both knew given your history that you might be away for a few months. You wrote while you were away but instructed me not to visit. “A girl like you shouldn’t be somewhere like this” you said. Then you said the same thing you always said “Make sure you look after my mum while I’m gone”.
I wasn’t expecting you home, and then one Friday night in September, I came home late from my second job. My mum greeted me at the door. ‘Dean has been here looking for you’ she said with a smile. The reason for the smile was that before you went away, there had been a few scary times that we thought we might have lost you and Mum had said to me “Kiddo, just prepare yourself for the fact, he may not make it home”. I have never seen her so happy to be wrong.
You had always been, I thought, too good looking for me. My first thought was elation that you were home and my second thought was about getting an appointment at the hairdressers and the beauticians first thing the next morning so I was ready to welcome you home not looking like a hot mess. I couldn’t sleep, I was so excited at the thought of seeing your face.
I arrived home from the hairdressers the next morning around midday. Ready to throw on an outfit that I had spent hours deciding on the night before and going to pick you up from your mum’s place. Purse in hand and almost out the door, the phone rang. It was my best friend; someone I had known since the first year of high school. “I’m so sorry about Dean” she said. I felt hot and like all the blood had drained from my body. I don’t think I even spoke. “I’m so sorry, I thought you knew” she said. I don’t remember what she said after that, I only remember calling for my mum as I dropped to the floor and screamed. The front door was still open and my mum was holding me while I sobbed. For a small moment where time seemed to stand still, I thought to myself, she could be wrong. Then, through the open door, I saw your mum and sister pulled up outside and I knew. You were gone.
Your mum asked me to speak at the funeral and of course I did. She told me over those few days how much you thought of me and how thankful she was that I was there. All I could think about was that if she knew it was all my fault, she would never be able to forgive me. If she knew that her baby boy was gone because instead of going to pick you up, I was worried about making a hair appointment and picking out clothes. That if I had just gone and got you, you would have been safe and asleep in my bed instead of taking your last breath alone on someone’s floor. The guilt was over whelming. I left town because I couldn’t stand being there, knowing that you weren’t. Seeing the sadness on your mum’s face was unbearable.
The last words you had physically spoken to me, were about looking after your mum and those were instructions I took seriously. For the next 21 years, we stayed in contact. She was my first call on the morning of your anniversary and your birthday and I loved her like part of my family. Last September, when she got sick, I went home. She had always been tiny but tough as nails, it was hard to see her frail and scared. We talked a lot about you during that visit. She was gone so quickly. I had underestimated how much of what I felt for you was a part of what I felt for your mum. Being there for her was the only thing left in the world I could do for you and now she was gone. Not only had I lost her but it felt like I lost you all over again.
The sadness of your death and what I could have done to prevent it will stay with me for the rest of my life. I don’t for one minute think we would have still been together, but you would always have been my friend. Even knowing what I know now, that I couldn’t change the ending and that it would hurt this much, I would never go back. I am so glad we met. So thankful for all the things I learnt because of you and so grateful for the relationship I had with your mum. To never have had you in my life would be unimaginable. I just need to live with the fact that I was the butterfly in this chaos.
It’s May 12, 2019 and today would have been your 47th birthday. For the first time in 22 years, your mum is not my first call of the day. It’s fitting that the date this year happens to fall on Mother’s Day. Your mum was a strong believer in god, I of course am not. Sometimes I hope she is right just so I can picture the two of you together and if I’m right and we all just go back into the ground and there is nothing else, then at least the pain of missing you is gone. The only thing those of us who love you can do now, is live the best life possible, talk about you often and hope the memories of you: both the great and the heart breaking ones, are enough to help us weather the storm.
On tour with the kid 
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