Early one evening on a late autumn Sunday, as I lay soaking in a scalding bath, my partner Tom appeared in the doorway.
asserted
partner → lie → doorway
“Jack just called,” he said.
asserted
he → call → ?
“It’s Oliver*.”
asserted
It → ’ → ?
There are friends for whom I would have required more information – “What do you mean?” – but I knew immediately that Oliver was dead.
asserted
Oliver → be → What
Ever since I’d met Oliver, I’d been waiting for Tom to tell me he was dead.
asserted
he → meet → me
Though they didn’t go to school together, they were part of the same extended network of schoolkids who seemed to move as one, like a giant spider, overwhelming the tram cars of Melbourne’s inner east come 3.30pm each day.
asserted
who → go → east
When I met him, in 2011, Oliver was undergoing treatment for oesophageal cancer.
asserted
Oliver → meet → cancer
He was spindly and drawn, but animated and charming; I instantly adored him, bookmarking him as a potential boyfriend for my best friend, and working up my sales pitch.
asserted
I → adore → pitch
“He’s delightful,” I told her.
asserted
I → ’ → her
There were just two things, I added, nervously.
asserted
I → be → ?
“He has cancer, and he’s an alcoholic.”
asserted
he → have → cancer
These two things defined Oliver’s existence when I met him, but by the time he died, it was only the latter.
asserted
it → define → time
For all the well-documented reasons people drift away from an addict, Tom and I didn’t see much of him in the last four years of his life.
asserted
Tom → document → life
But when Oliver died, the thing that kept us at arm’s length in life – his alcoholism – also died, along with any weary feelings.
asserted
that → die → feelings
All that’s left now is a sadness that seems to grow rather than shrink as the months pass, a sharpening sting at what we’ve lost: a boyish, tender imp, who made everyone he knew feel like the best person in the world.
asserted
he → leave → world
I’ve never had a bigger cheerleader; Oliver hoovered up copies of a book I wrote that mysteriously obsessed him – “It’s so good, Buns!” (it’s not) – handing them out like candy canes to all his relatives at Christmas.
asserted
it → have → Christmas
Eventually, I gave Oliver an armful of my own copies.
asserted
I → give → copies
In return, he pulled up in the driveway one day and presented me with an enormous veterinary science text, unreadable to the lay person; Oliver came from a family of vets, Tom later reminded me.
asserted
Tom → pull → me
I binned it immediately, shaking my head: what was he thinking?
asserted
he → bin → what
I feel ashamed now that I threw it out – what was I thinking? – even though I had no wish to learn about horse musculature.
asserted
I → feel → musculature
At the time, I took Oliver’s gift as frustrating evidence of just how addled his brain had become.
asserted
brain → take → evidence
Now I see it as a gesture of gratitude and love, from someone who no longer had very much of anything – material or otherwise – to give.
asserted
who → see → anything
In the days after his death, Tom and I joked about “what Oliver would want” at his funeral: for his coffin to be wept on by his mates’ mini-skirted wives (Oliver was in love with every woman he ever met); for everyone to get damagingly pissed at his wake.
asserted
everyone → joke → wake
We told ourselves that laughing in the face of death was right up Oliver’s alley: “It’s what he would’ve wanted.
asserted
he → tell → what
We’ve stopped making these jokes, now that he’s really gone, as opposed to when he had just died, when he was barely gone, and we felt him laughing with us.
asserted
him → stop → us
Oliver still seemed to be with us when the plans for his funeral were being made, when the WhatsApp group was filling with old photos of him, even if he was, technically, as dead then as he is now.
asserted
he → seem → him
Oliver and I never really spent that much time together; it’s Tom who’s mourning a lifelong friendship, not me, and I have to remind myself of this every time I drive past his old flat and feel my stomach tighten and knot.
asserted
stomach → spend → flat
His funeral was held in the towering, domed chapel of his alma mater, its soaring ceilings illuminated by blinding beams of golden sunlight.
asserted
ceilings → hold → sunlight
Raised by atheist parents, I suddenly understood the appeal of a Catholic send-off, the scale and grandeur of the scenery somehow reassuring, as huge and overwhelming as death itself, telegraphing to all in attendance: “This is not a small loss.
asserted
This → raise → attendance
Photos of Oliver filled a screen, tracing a life that should have gone the same way as his siblings – upward and upward, filled with the blessings that come from the combination of a loving family and good education – but did not.
asserted
that → fill → family
I could write more about his drinking, but how many more descriptions of addiction does the world need?
uncertain
world → write → addiction
It’s Oliver who was special, not his addiction.
asserted
who → ’ → ?
Less than two weeks after he died, a friend from my 20s – part of another large, spidery group who crawled across town in the early 2000s – turned up face-down on the bluestones of a city alley.
asserted
who → die → alley
Jono didn’t have much in common with Oliver, except that he, too, in his younger years, burned with charisma and mischief.
asserted
he → have → charisma
Watching Jono being lowered awkwardly into the cold, brown ground, I fought the urge to ask his family to consider a less subterranean resting place.
asserted
I → watch → place
Jono, like Oliver, loved people: he’d want to be up here at ground level, among the action.
asserted
he → love → action
But I don’t know what Jono and Oliver’s last wishes were.
asserted
wishes → know → ?
I do know both would want the world to know that, once upon a time, they were the most radiant people in the room – that people were drawn to them, not away from them.
asserted
people → know → them
There’s a line in a song I love, an elegy to a lost boy, and I hear it in my head when I think of them both now.
asserted
I → ’ → them
* Name has been changed.
asserted
Name → change → ?
…and 1 more, not listed.
The Aporia
