Death and the Internet

It was the summer of 1990. In between my third and fourth year at university I decided not to go home for the summer break. I thought, quite rightly that hanging out in Vancouver over the summer would be better for my social life, as well as getting that pesky office experience that would help my career in the long run.

I shared a three bedroom apartment on Commercial around 47th with very good friends Dan and Allison and fourth roommate Julie, who I remember chiefly for the fact that she used to wash her car clad in nothing but her bathing suit, a fact that me and my beer-drinking buddy Dominic could appreciate as we consumed many a bottle on the balcony over-looking the driveway. She moved out a month or two into the summer and was replaced by another friend Rhonda, who didn't have a car, and didn't prance around in her bathing suit. Quite a pity, actually.

I was feeling pretty happy regarding my current situation when I got a call from my best friend from high school Brent, who was in the area and wanted to see me. How'd he get my number I asked? My Dad gave it to him, he replied.

I don't know if anyone else admits this, but I had grown apart from my high school friends - I really didn't have much in common with them anymore and was loathe to introduce them to my newer, cooler (relatively) university friends.

Yeah, I felt like a complete asshole, so I decided to invite Brent over for some drinks.

His brothers drop him off in an old junker of a sedan and take off, saying that they'll see him. Do we have any common ground left? I ask him what he's been doing. Rigs in Alberta, he says. Gets a contract, makes a ton of dough out in the middle of nowhere, comes to town and blows it. Repeat, repeat and repeat. As he's telling me this, he's eyeing my female roommates in a way that makes me think that this was a bad idea.

I get us out of there. We go to a club in Gastown. The music's loud (great, I don't have to talk to him) and I think a girl I know (and want to know better) might be there, but thankfully isn't. The hours drag on and I realize that we have nothing left to say, nothing in common. This was a big, big mistake. His eyes are prowling the dancefloor, ogling the girls as they glide by to the beat...

I really don't want to be there. I'm going to have a word with my Dad about giving out my phone number. Thankfully, I'll be moving soon so the fact that my address is known, isn't that big a security risk...

I'm an awful, awful person.

The night's winding down - I ask him when he's calling his brothers. He looks at me funny. Call them? They'll pick him up tomorrow, he says. Oh, so where are you staying? He stares at me and I feel the obligation of five years of high school. Five years of getting each others back when everyone else thought we were losers. Five years of being there when the other needed him. When his Dad beat the crap out of him and he started to drink uncontrollably our last year of school, who talked my parents into letting him stay until graduation? Yeah, that was me.

I tell him to get ready to go - we'll hail a cab.

Cool, he says, I just gotta go to the bathroom. He heads off as I try to think about how to explain this to my roommates.

He comes back, looking a lot more tired and groggy than when he left.

We hike up to Granville to hail a cab. It takes longer than I expect, but it's a Tuesday at 2am and Vancouver ain't Toronto. I look over and notice that Brent appears to be asleep. I can't wake him. At all. A sudden realization sweeps through me: the fucking bastard took something in the club and now I have to deal.

The first cab slows, stops. When he sees me moving my prone friend towards the rear door, he puts the cab in gear and floors it, leaving me and my friend alone again. Brent slumps onto the sidewalk and rolls over snoring. I hate him at this moment. Really.

I'm tempted to leave his ass on the sidewalk and make my own way home. Minutes go by and I'm still contemplating it. Friendship aside, I couldn't think of a plausible explanation for his brothers the next morning.

I have to drag this human anchor along with me.

Finally a cab and then finally home. Hauling his ass up the stairs and throwing him on the floor of my room. Looking at the time: 3:20 am and contemplating what a shitty time I've had. I try to sleep but can't.

Morning's not much better. He's ogling my roommates again, and even worse, playing with a Swiss Army knife over and over again like one of those compulsive freaks that cut into their forearms again and again and again. He's talking about us all renting a houseboat and having parties in the Okanagan.

I want him dead. The thought actually crosses my mind.

Hours pass. Finally his deadbeat brothers show up. I am relieved. I can't get him out the door quick enough. We'll do it again he says. I say sure and think to myself never in a fucking million years...

His brothers ask if I want to buy a calculator. They have a choice of about 50, all in the trunk of their car. They show me this in broad daylight. Great, I think. A "business trip" for them.

Brent gets in the car and says "See ya."

The car drives away and I never see him again.

I climb the stairs back to the apartment and throw myself onto the couch with relief, the tension washing out of me...

"What the hell was that all about?" says Allison.

"I have no fucking idea. Anyone wanna lay odds that he'll be dead in a gutter within five years?"

I felt bad for saying it, worse believing it. I vowed to myself not to give him a second thought...

---

...and I didn't until I was playing around with Google the other day.

And came across his mother's obituary, which mentions that her son Brent had "preceded her into death."

What a stupid way to put it. I googled further and came across his name in someone's online family tree, listing his death in December 1997.

He was 28. He had a "partner" and a daughter named Jordanna...

As I sat in wonder at the power of the information age, yielding all this information at the whim of a few strokes of the keyboard, I also sat and thought if there was anything that I could've done to help him; was he tied to his fate to be dead at 28 just the way I'd off-handly predicted in a moment of anger?

Rest easy, Brent. I'm sorry I couldn't help you, and I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend.

I'm sorry that you've wasted your life and have a little girl that will never know you.

I'm sorry I didn't know until now, years later, that you were even dead.

If I'd known, maybe I could've stood by you that one last time...