Viral

I guess we're all still in shock right now
I guess everything will work itself out
Everything's gonna' be okay
Once the bloodstains wash away
Nobody meant to give you hell
Nobody meant to take your mother
Nobody cared that you were broken
Nobody meant to let you suffer

Gary's dead at fourteen
Ice cold and buried, just a dream
The biting virus in his soul
Won the battle, he let go
Now where the sunlight hit his face
There's only cessation and decay
Every moment slipped away
Every daydream dreamt in vain

And every day
I ask myself
How could I have stopped you
But still I wake
heartsick and dazed
Because I can't sleep through another replay

You're killing yourself again.

So many things I should have said
What was it running through your head
That made you throw yourself away
Too many questions,far too late

Nobody meant to give you hell
Nobody meant to take your mother
Nobody cared that you were broken
Nobody meant to let you burn.

And every day
I ask myself
How could I have stopped you
But still I wake
heartsick and dazed
Because I can't sleep through another replay

You're killing yourself again.

Wake me up
I cannot sleep through this again
You look dead long before
The bullet hits the wind

You're killing yourself again.

-"Viral" by Tendril (lyrics slightly modified)

You can't even find the CD that this song came from. For the longest, it seemed like Tendril (by far one of the best bands to ever come from the Dallas/Fort Worth area) simply disappeared. When I bought it some twelve years ago, I hadn't had any friends die of an overdose. No one I knew had gotten killed in a car wreck. No one had been murdered. No one had committed suicide.

Things changed.

I still have Tendril's El Ultimo Supercell. It's so scratched up that I can't even listen to this song on that CD, but I still have every word of the song memorised. I always remember it on 19 May.

I remember how it was sunnier early on in the day, but rain clouds moved in and began to pour over the town I lived in by the end of it. I remember it was a Monday. I remember people asking that morning, "Hey, anyone seen Gary or Angela?"

Matt Graves knocked on my door. It was about 8:30 at night. He stood in the rain, which was unseasonally cool for late-May in Texas, and had a stony, serious look on his face. Matt, being the perenniel jokester, was not wont to wear such an expression. My heart sank.

"Austin... Gary's dead."

Yeah... that's when it all changed.

The rest of the night – no, the rest of the week plays like a fog through my memories. I recall trying to go to sleep to on the floor of my room with 90 Pound Wuss playing on repeat. I remember sleeping with the windows open, because I liked the cool, moist air. I remember my mom coming into my room at 2 in the morning after going to visit Gary's mom and dad, and confirming what we already knew. "Double suicide"

My dad recited the twenty-third Psalm. I slept horribly. I got to school the next day with grey thunderheads above me still blotting out the sky. My brother Ross spent his tenth birthday in tears.

The media seized upon Baily Junior High like vultures. Grief counselors filled the library. Kids came to them, and I had no idea why. Hardly any of them knew Gary or Angela – not the way I did at least.

Gary and I had been friends since fourth grade. He took me to one of the first church services I'd ever been to. We banded together in the "Damage, Inc." club we formed to stand against all the gangsta' kids who wanted to beat us up for being white. We started listening to deathmetal together. He helped talk me out of suicide when my pret-teen crush rejected me, and when my fifth grade teacher mocked me and ridiculed me. I helped talk him out of suicide when he flunked sixth grade. I was with him at Six Flags when some guy jacked him up with a fistload. We went to God's Place and took in the local Spirit-filled hardcore and metal shows. He had been there at almost every pivotal point of my life for those six years, and then he created another one for me.

Double suicide...

It was the first time I felt the cold emptiness of deep, real loss. It was a point when I came face to face with the way my friends lives were moving along. Shiftless. Hopeless. Godless. What could help them? What could save any of them?

Chris Cordio was in tears and he looked at me and said "That guy at God's Place last Saturday, that guy who went into Gary and Bambam for all the stuff they're doing – he was their last chance!" Chris was right. I saw Gary hanging out with his neo-Nazi friends, and I remember this one man turning around and saying without the hint of a stutter that they needed to repent, in no uncertain or seeke-ersensitive terms. It turned into a fiasco after that, but Chris was right. Two days later, Gary had no more chances.

Every day I think about him. I can still feel the weight of the casket in my left hand. I still see him resting so peacefully in the white drapery. I still feel myself wanting to shake him and say "Wake up!"

I saw the stitches on the top of his head from when the coroner had finished his autopsy. I saw the scars on his arms from where he carved "Divine Intervention" onto himself a couple years back. I remember the coffin shutting. I remember that last good-bye.

Being a pallbearer sucks, especially when you're only fourteen years old. Everyone I know who has passed in all the years since have brought him back to my mind. Every person who's taken their life or had their life taken. Every person whose last chance slipped by. I like to think that I've done something to save a "Gary's" life since then. I want to believe that I've helped someone. Maybe I have. I hope so. I still know mostly that I have had a lot of friends die, and to mind, I cannot think of a single one of them who died of natural causes.

Gary Don Dean: 4 July, 1982 – 19 May, 1997
I pray that he rests in peace...

Comments

[Laurie]

Austin, this is beautiful. Amazing song as well. You've always had a way with words. I'm sorry for your loss... wow, and all the other people who have doubtlessly been affected. You're in my prayers today.

I have no doubt that you have helped "Gary"s. It's just hard to see on this side of things.

[Chris]

man, i still have that CD as well... i still remember hearing about that like it was yesterday. Wonderfully fitting lyrics though.

[Fab]

I hear ya, Austin. One problem I find myself with is that I focus on only the Garys of the world and have little concern for anyone who is secure in themselves. Only it turns out that even the secure ones are often insecure and need just as much love as the Garys.