My cousin John took his own life on Friday.
I had known him since he was born. Growing up, my only sibling was my sister Emily, so the closest thing I had to brothers was John and his younger brother Will. I always greatly enjoyed seeing them through our various stages of childhood and adolescence. The effect of the two of them together was very synergistic.
One tradition we had whenever we’d all be at my Grandma’s house in Cleveland during the summers was “the big game.” John and Will always wanted to play a baseball game with all the cousins versus the Dads; they’d push for it for the entire visit until it finally happened. The Dads would always let us win of course, and John and Will would then boast for the rest of the stay that “we creamed” (actually Will would say “we cweamed”).
As we all became teenager boys and guys in our 20s, John and I came to bond about checking out girls and rap music and I’d pass him mix tapes of stuff when I’d see him. One thing that was striking was how much he grew physically; my little cousin shot up to a man taller than me. Many years passed and I didn’t see him much because he was in Boston and I live in Chicago, and our families are based in Knoxville and Raleigh. I did get to see him at our cousin Laura’s wedding in 2002, at the N.C. beach in 2004 and when his brother graduated from Northwestern in 2009.
Jenny and I got married in May of last year and our wedding seemed to make a big impression on John. Jenny had met him a couple years before when staying at their family’s house in Knoxville on the way back to N.C. She really liked him and said she thought he was very sweet and cute; that “he looks like Matt Damon.” John really liked Jenny as well and liked meeting all of our friends at the wedding (in fact, he may have gotten a nurse back to his hotel room that night).
Perhaps inspired by this newfound connection to us, John came up to Chicago to visit the following July – a year ago next weekend. As soon as he got here we took the train to a White Sox game. By the ninth inning it was pretty clear the Sox had the game in the bag so we cut out early to get ahead of the crowd and as we were walking outside of the park the game ended -- the Sox having won -- so fireworks went off above the park. I said “Hey, so they won!” and John said “Yup. They will never lose. They’re going all the way” (the Sox tanked that season but that’s another story). We then went directly to the Billy Goat Tavern downtown and watched the Cubs lose this game to the Colorado Rockies in which they gave up some record amount of runs in the ninth inning, losing something like 15 to 3, which John loved. John hated the Cubs. I don’t know much about sports but after going to a Sox game with him and watching the Cubs lose a game so disastrously, he really inspired me to want to get into the White Sox, despite how impolitic that would be as a resident of Chicago who lives north of the Loop.
John and I had this thing of being into Ozzie Guillen as a defiant personality in the news. I relayed to him this story I read in the Sun-Times where the pitcher for a team playing against the Sox accidentally hit one of their batters with a wild pitch, so the next time that pitcher was at bat, Guillen told his pitcher to throw a pitch directly at the batter. The pitcher refused and Guillen busted him down to the minors as punishment! Another similar story is this time Guillen called Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti a “faggot” and when pressed to apologize, Guillen said he apologized to gay people everywhere for using the slur, but not to Jay Mariotti. John absolutely loved stuff like this.
The next day of John’s visit we went down to Chinatown to do dim sum. One funny thing was Jenny and I kept ordering little dishes after he was starting to get exhausted and he said – in his slight twang that was a mix of Tennessee and Ohio accents – “How much damage are you guys looking to do?” I laughed and said we were going to overeat a little. On the way back we were listening to this Gucci Mane mix tape and at one point he goes “Mirror mirror mirror; who’s the dopest in the game?” and then a much deeper voice (Gucci himself with an effect on his mic) answers “Why you ask that stupid question? Don’t you know it’s Gucci Mane?” John and I both had these big silly grins on our faces because we love punch lines like that in rap. On that same tape there’s a track where Diplo puts a Gucci Mane vocal over a beat based around a piano sample that we recognized as taken from some R&B hit of the ‘90s. I was willing to gloss over this but John would not let it go. Once we got home he went upstairs and flipped through his iPod until he figured it out – it was “Can’t Let Go” by Mariah Carey.
This was one of the unique things about John; his musical tastes were pretty much centered on ‘90s R&B. Like if something was on B.E.T. Video Soul back in the day, he probably had it on his iPod. So while my other friends were nagging me about the new Radiohead album or whatever, John would be like “Dude are you pumped for the new R. Kelly?!” It was certainly refreshing.
Later that day we went to a party on Megan’s Dad’s yacht. We had a great time on the yacht; to such an extent that John actually fell asleep for a while and then woke up to party more. We stood on the bow of the ship and watched fireworks. John was raving about how awesome all this was the entire time – he told me later it was the best party he had ever been to.
The next day John went off to the beach with friends as we prepared to have people over for a barbecue; I think this was the birthday party we had for Maggie. Maggie was a bit standoffish toward John because she’s scared of tall men and barks at them, but once John sat down on the couch she’d cuddle with him and they were total buds. The party was cool and John talked baseball with my friend Rob. Later that night we watched the debut of Jersey Shore season two and John, despite wanting to get to bed, stayed up and watched some and was amused by the comic drama of the show. The next morning I saw him off and headed to work.
It was a great visit and John did something afterward to really distinguish himself; he sent us a thank you card (scanned below) describing the entire visit and how much it meant to him.
John made a great impression on anyone he met, ever, as I’ve learned in relaying the news of his passing to friends in the last couple days. Everyone I’ve told has immediately said he was a great guy and so sweet, happy and funny. And these are people who were just around him for a couple hours hanging out in a hotel room eating pizza after our wedding or who met him during his visit to Chicago. They’ve all told me they remember him well and they think of him fondly. So that’s how I remember him; as someone who touched lives in a positive way. He definitely touched mine.
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