Matthew Montelius

November 25, 2009, 6:09 pm
Filed under: frenz

When we decide to do something big for ourselves, for our lives, it is not considered selfish. If you want to move across the country or take yourself on a vacation or change jobs or go back to school or have a baby — people might give you a critical eye and some unnecessary advice, or they might applaud you and wish you the best. Mostly they understand that this life is yours and you are to do with it what you please. These personal decisions we make about the only thing that truly belongs to us, our lives, are not selfish.

My friend Matthew, who was recently diagnosed with cancer decided he wouldn’t wait around for it, or his unhealthy need for pills, to take over his life. He hung himself yesterday. I want to scream and beat the memory of him with how selfish and perversely indulgent it is to remove yourself from your parents’ and your four siblings’ and your friends’ lives.

I have to remember that thinking this way is what is selfish. Thinking that we’re hurting and we’re grieving and we’re mourning and how dare he is what is truly selfish. Because we don’t know the kind of hurting that makes people call it all quits. That’s why we’re around to breathe and cry and attempt to move forward. We have no idea. And I hope we never do.

Music and scent memories are always the strongest. They take over a sense and route themselves on an expresslane through your brain and into your heart or your gut or wherever you feel your memories before you even have a chance to set up a roadblock. A sudden whiff of a stranger can take me back to a boyfriend I had in eighth grade or the opening chords of certain songs can buckle my knees.

I feel Matthew in Counting Crows’ Round Here and all of the ways we decided that at least for us, that song was written about our hometown.

I feel him in drunken, sloppy kisses and good intentions. I feel him in self-depricating humor and the time he called my house to apologize for something he really didn’t owe me for, but changed the way I saw him for the better. I feel him in cheap passes and in long, tight hugs equally. In the easy way he could change my mood in high school by stopping me in the hall and the lazy way he never bothered with a bathroom, but took it out on your lawn. He is sloppy and funny and kind and sweet and means only the best, no matter what’s coming out of his mouth and if you know him, lucky you, you’ll never stop adoring him either.

He doesn’t hurt anymore. And that is all that matters.

-CJ