Catharsis, Wooten Woods, And Mark.

I’m typically pretty introspective. More so than what I believe most people are. I’ve spent a lot of time working on myself – changing the things I don’t like. And dealing with the shit that life has dealt. Not to say that my life has been extraordinarily difficult, but I’ve had my fair share to deal with. And I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job with myself. I’m far from the best version of myself, but I give myself credit where credit is due. I’ve put in the work and I think I’m a pretty good person as a result of it.

I’m going to share something that is deeply meaningful and personal to me. I’m going to share it, because there is a certain beauty I find in certain aspects of humanity, that is worth sharing. And as I articulate my thoughts into this medium, it helps me process it further and better myself.

In order to truly appreciate the ending of this story, we’ve gotta dig pretty deep into the past.

New Beginnings

When I was 19 or 20, I worked for Tech company doing phone and email support. Not the most glamorous job, but it paid pretty damn good and I was good at it. Half the time I would play SNES games or work on making chain mail and it would drive people around me nuts, but they couldn’t say jack about it, because I was the best worker there – impeccable track record. But this doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that next to me, sat a man that would become one of my closest friends. Mark would eventually teach me so much about life, circumstance, people, relationships, video games, movies, what it means to be a true friend, and would enrich my life in such a profound way, words truly do not do his essence justice. At least words crafted and articulated by me. Maybe a more poetic word smith could express in a way that can convey close to the effect he had on me.

At the time, I was commuting 45+ minutes to work every morning – something that didn’t affect me too negatively at the time, but would drive me insane today. I had only lived with one other person at this point in my life (other than my parents) and I really needed to live closer to my work. Mark found out that I needed a place to live and as luck would have it, he and his roommate had just started looking for another person. I didn’t know that much about Mark other than he loved video games, was a huge movie buff, and loved food. He was a pretty big and tall fat guy. And if you knew him, he wouldn’t take offense at the term. One thing he always did was take responsibility for himself. He was a stickler about personal responsibility and owning up to your shit. He would say fairly frequently that if he died from a heart attack, he wanted no pity, because he got himself into this situation and didn’t do anything to stop it. Whenever someone had a pattern of behavior and would complain that some “unfair” negative circumstance happened, his response would be “Well you must have wanted this to happen. You knew this would be the end result if you did X”. He always knew the best places to eat though. And whenever someone would ask him for a recommendation, he’d respond with “Oh sure… ask the fat guy where the good food is. I see…”. It still puts a smile on my face thinking about it.

Mark taught me a lot about expectations and setting them. Too many times to count. When I moved into his place (into a tiny ass converted dining room with sheet rock walls put up – a story for another time), there was really only one rule: No drugs. Mark had zero tolerance for drugs. He hated how people would change when using them. Especially how inconsiderate users could be. He and his roommate were VERY clear on this rule. I’m sure they were concerned with me being a rock musician and whatnot, but this wasn’t a problem for me at all. I had experimented with pot when I was younger, but it wasn’t for me. I don’t like being out of control and vulnerable.

Skipping ahead a little bit, late one night Mark knocked on my door and I told him to come in. He opened the door and then just sniffed. Several big sniffs and then he just turned around and walked off. I wasn’t sure if I should be concerned or if I should laugh. I got out of my chair and followed him down the hall way, all whilst he continued deeply smelling through his nose. It would turn out that the other roommate was actually smoking a lot of pot. Which was insane after they’d both made it clear that it would be unacceptable there. This ended up being a great thing in the end, because we both left and got our own place, which would start many years of a really great friendship – one of such depth, I seriously doubt I will ever experience it again. I don’t reflect on that with sadness, other than to recognize the uniqueness of our friendship. Not many people are like him.

School Time

I constantly would surprise Mark with my lack of exposure to pop culture. Granted, he was probably 15 or so years older than me, but I really had little exposure to a lot of media. For example, I’d never seen Star Wars. Technically, I’d seen the Phantom Menace in the theater, but that was so bad, I figured people who loved Star Wars just had horrible taste. Mark loved movies. We would watch a metric ton of movies. He actually found his original edition Star Wars VHS tapes and a VCR (This was well into the DVD era), just so my first experience with “the real Star Wars”, could be untainted by George Lucas’ horrible re-makes. I can’t even recall all the movies he showed me. Se7en, Shawshank Redemption, Unbreakable, Sixth Sense. It was one of our favorite things to do. He also introduced me to Klipsch speakers, which are even today, my favorite brand of speakers.

Mark was relentless if he felt disrespected. One time we had a BBQ over the weekend and there a few hamburgers left over. During the week, I ate them without thinking that anyone else might want them. I wasn’t really use to living with other people. I earnestly just didn’t think about it. And when he got home, he was really upset. I don’t recall the exact words he used, but it really made me feel shitty. I told him that I really didn’t think anyone would mind, since they were leftovers. One thing Mark was exceptionally good at, was understanding people and intentions and motivations. He really helped me understand expectations. He wasn’t really mad about the burgers. He’d pretty much skipped breakfast that day and he had a really shitty day at work. Boss was yelling at him. And all he could think about half the day was “At least there’s leftover BBQ waiting at home”. This was a huge life lesson that I learned about setting expectations and how a seemingly innocuous situation could be made 10 times worse. This was one of MANY life lessons I’d learn from him.

In many ways, Mark was my biggest mentor. He also taught me a lot about work ethic and…. setting expectations at work. It seemed so much could be resolved, by clear communication. He also taught me to keep my emotions in check when I was frustrated. Keeping a calm head made it so you could be heard by other people. The minute you get upset, you lose respect and the understanding ear of others. He taught me about love languages and the “emotional bank” – That every action either withdraws or deposits into your proverbial relationship bank. These lessons profoundly shaped who I’ve become today.

Luck

Mark had the shittiest luck. Anything that could go wrong, did. We used to think he was just being overly dramatic when things like his Playstation would die 1 week after the warranty was up. Or his PC video card would spontaneously combust. But we all saw it happen over and over again. Coincidence after coincidence. Little or big. It became a running joke for us, but at the same time, we all kind of really believed that some mystical force had it in for this guy. He seemed to handle disappointment pretty well though. I learned that it’s a lot easier to handle negative situations, if you can laugh about it. So even though all this bad stuff would happen, we’d just laugh it off. “Of course this just ‘happened’ to happen like this! Cause it’s ‘you’ that’s doing it!”. We’d joke that he must have been a child molester in a past life, cause karma was out to get him.

World of Warcraft and other crappy MMORPGs

We had a circle of friends that I became really close with. We had “game night” playing endless hours of WoW – A game that I think is absolute crap. But it was never about the game. For 4-5 hours a night, we’d talk about life, love, gains, loss – whatever. We did have fun strategizing in the games at times, but we all knew the real reason we were playing and that’s because we all had real meaningful friendships with each other. Truly deep friendship. The game was just an excuse to get us talking for hours on end. This tradition went on for many many years. In fact, it only really stopped when Mark was unable to play games anymore. More on that later.

Health

At one point, I was over 300 pounds. I didn’t realize it until I asked Mark to takes some pics of me on my motorcycle to send to a girl I was interested in. I was way fat. But I wasn’t upset. If Mark had taught me anything, it’s that I’m responsible for my own actions. I had been eating pizza and fast food every night and lunch for a couple years. And as he would say “You must have wanted to be fat. You chose to be fat by eating the way you do”. It would be hypocritical if anyone else had said it, considering mark was well into the mid 300s, but he believed it of himself as well. He was harder on himself than he ever was on anyone else.

This sparked a huge change me. I started learning about nutrition and health. I bought an elliptical machine for our living room, so I could use it while we watched movies. Mark also used it. But as I was getting great results, he wasn’t. I tried to encourage him every chance I could. I found out much later that him seeing me lose a bunch of weight was really discouraging for him. He tried many times. Changing both diet and exercise, but he struggled with food addiction. He was open about it later in life. I have very few regrets in life. but one of my biggest was not trying harder to encourage and help him with his health. I’m not ridden with guilt. But I do wish I had done more.

Mark got diabetes.

And it slowly destroyed him. Every attempt he made to eat better and work out, was thwarted in some fashion. If he was working out a lot, he’d get injured. If he was making healthy meals, he’d get sick and resort to fast food. Eventually his feet started going numb. It was a downward spiral. At a certain point, he was unable to work out. Sure, there are probably things he could have done. There were definitely things he could have done differently. But I watched him get more and more discouraged over time. Eventually his eye sight started to go and he was unable to play games with us on game nights. He would try, but we all could sense his frustration of not being able to perform like he used to. We’d switch to easier games to keep it going, since it was really about the friendships and sharing what was going on in our lives. We had all moved away. I was in Texas. Brandon in Tennessee. Chuck in Maine. But the thing that held us together was game night. Mark would pretty much insist that we had our weekly night. I cherished those nights more than anything else.

As Mark’s health got worse, our talks got deeper and deeper. I remember him telling me that he was afraid he was going to die. But again, don’t feel sorry for him. He chose this for himself with his inability to stop eating destructively. Even though he was seeing a therapist for food addiction and making huge changes in his life. I remember telling him that night that if he died, I’d really miss him. And we talked about many things for many hours.

He was making great changes to his diet and exercising whenever he could. And we were even seeing progress in his weight drop. And then he had a stroke. Followed by a heart attack a week later. Every bit of progress he’d made, flushed right down the fucking toilet. Life can be completely unfair. We watched him struggle for so many years and he was FINALLY getting a hold of himself. But it was always something. Once again, he was unable to be healthy and being set back in all of his goals, reverted his eating. At one point, my circle of friends had talked about having him move in with one of us, so we could take total control over his meals and workouts. Any one of us would be willing to do it. For the amount he had enriched our lives, it would be a drop in the bucket to return.

Travel

I lived in Texas, but worked for a California based company. One of the perks was that I got to fly back to CA for work regularly. *Every* single time, I visited Mark and spent all night talking. He was living with his mom, since he was unable to work for quite a while, due to his health. I remember one of our conversations we had after his sister died. Mark had a bunch of sisters and brothers (5 or 6, I think) and his sister had just died. Many of his family members were struggling with her death. But I remember that Mark was doing surprisingly well. And I asked him how he was doing. And he told me that he had spent at least 1 day a week hanging out with his sister for pretty much ever. And that he had no regrets with how much he put into their relationship. He didn’t feel he could have really done any more and therefore, he accepted the inevitable. This rings true to me today. I spent every chance I could being with Mark, fostering our friendship. I have zero regrets. Other than wishing I had done more to force him into better health. But I also realize that we all make our own decisions. I’m not alone in these feelings. My other friends had also tried many times.

The Inevitable

Mark got really sick and was hospitalized. I was already going to California for a friend’s wedding and the first thing I did when I got off the plane was go see Mark in the hospital. He was asleep when I got there. So I waited in the corner of the room for him. I noticed on the white board, it said “Jehovah’s Witness – No blood transfusions”. This was odd to me, because Mark came from a Witness family, but he was long dis-fellowshipped and held no beliefs of the kind. He ended up waking up and I gave him a big hug. He was really weak and tired. He explained that he didn’t want a blood transfusion because he was deathly scared he’d get the “AIDs blood” bag. Remember that Mark had the WORST luck. So thinking he’d get AIDs from a transfusion didn’t really seem all that unreasonable to us.  He found that it was easier to just tell the doctors that he’s a Jehovah’s Witness – Because they have to respect religious beliefs and Jovies don’t allow blood swapping. The only problem was that Mark desperately needed blood. My ex-wife, a cardio-thoracic ICU nurse, looked over his charts and spoke with the other nurses and I could see the sadness on her face. We had to convince him to take blood or would would definitely die.

We ended up convincing him and the hospital staff thanked us deeply. I eventually had to leave and go to bed. The wedding was the following day and I had to be there. The next day, another friend got a call from Mark. He left a voice mail telling him that he was feeling much better and that he’d be able to leave soon. I could finally breath a little bit and enjoy myself. Mark had come so close to death, so many times. The only reason he survived his last heart attack, was because he was on blood thinners from the stroke. And I remember vividly how horrible that was for him. He was in and out of consciousness and tormented the entire time.

The following day, I took my flight home. When I landed, I checked my messaged and I got a text from his nephew, that he died that day. My heart sank into despair. I wanted so badly to get off that plane, but I was stuck waiting for everyone to de-board. I have never felt a the weight of a greater loss than that. I hope to never experience it again. But that’s pretty unrealistic when we’re all just a bunch of walking meat bags with a finite shelf life.

Mourning

Mark’s family was in control of his remains. Since he came from a Jehovah’s Witness family, but was dis-fellowshipped, they didn’t see it as appropriate to have a funeral in their traditional way. There was never a service for him. He just vanished that day. I could hear his voice in the voice mail he left Chuck the night he said he felt better. I could see his pictures on FaceBook. But he was gone. Gone gone. My circle of friends had conference calls for a little while. We’d reminisce about many different stories. Way too much to share. And it felt a lot better. But I never got to really say goodbye. Death was a brand new experience for me and this was far from ideal even in the shittiest of circumstances.

Mark collected Hurricane glasses from Hard Rock Cafe. I had given him several from my travels. Aruba. Singapore. A few others. I have since taken on the collection and am determined to get them all, to honor his memory. Mourning is a strange thing. At first, it hurts to remember. Now, it hurts to not remember. And PTSD is a fickle bitch. My first trip to New Orleans was fantastic. I was enjoying myself, exploring the city, looking for music and fun. I rounded a corner and in front of my was a sign for the New Orleans Hard Rock Cafe. I nearly hit the ground, it hurt so bad. It’s like getting socked in the nose and stomach, completely unprovoked and out of no where. I also broke down when I saw a hospital bed, that reminded me of the last time I saw him. Emotional trauma is very real and I’d never experienced anything like it before.

Months later, I visited my good friend Brandon, Mark’s nephew, also one of our game night guys. We intended to have a little send off for Mark while I was in town. We shared some stories. I’m pretty sure I “poured one for the homies” (Mark woulda laughed), at some point. He would have definitely laughed. But that was it. I don’t even know what day he died. There was no service for him. Nothing to remember his end. And you know what? I think I’m fine with that. I’d rather not remember the end. I remember our friendship and love all the time, even if I don’t have a date to put on my calendar to remind me of his end. I didn’t realize just how much of a toll not having a funeral had on me, until recently.

Catharsis. Energy. Beauty.

About a year ago, I discovered the closest thing to Heaven on earth, that I believe is possible. Wooten Woods. Victor Wooten’s Bass Nature camp changed my life. So did the Music Theory camp I went to 3 months later. And so did the Spirit of Music camp that I was at a few weeks ago. Victor is like no man I’ve ever met before. It’s really an honor to call him my friend. The love that pours from him, is truly amazing. His Spirit camp is – AMAZING. I shan’t discuss what goes on, because I wouldn’t want to spoil it for future goers. But I hope to come back every year.

One of the nights at Spirit camp. We had some guests. Stephen Jay and his sons. Wonderful people. They hung out with us all night until about 2:30 AM. One unexpected thing that happened, was that we were given lanterns to light up and send off into the sky. I had never done this before and was pretty excited about it. I ripped my first one, even though I was being careful, and had to make another. Some people wrote words on their lanterns. I did not write anything. We cast our lanterns one by one up into the sky, with whatever wishes and thoughts we had.

While doing so, a few other people played spontaneous music. A Cello, a Sax, and a custom made bow instrument that I’m not even sure what it was. But the trio played the most beautiful music. It reached out and spoke to my soul.

I looked up to the night sky and watched as 50 or so lanterns floated into the night sky. It was truly beautiful.

Brandon came up to me to see how I was doing. I gave him a big hug and then it hit me. He had sent up his lantern for Mark. I was overcome by emotion. Part of me felt guilty. I hadn’t thought of Mark when I sent mine off. I’m not sure why. Maybe I had just started to get comfortable with life without him. But at that very moment, all of the lanterns became about Mark. The music played, and brought all of the memories of him back. Vividly. I sobbed in Brandon’s arms. I then realized, that I never got to say goodbye to Mark. This was finally the moment where I could let go. I could accept. I could appreciate our time we together. And I could heal the wounds that I’d wrapped up for years. I cried in Victor’s arms too. He gives the best hugs, in case you ever get a chance to get a Wooten hug. My heart was healed of a great burden that night. And I know many other people had their own healing process through it. I can only imagine that every other person had just as much weight lifted from them. The gift that was given to us that night, was profound.

I’ve been wanting to convey to others what that night meant to me. But it just seemed too monumental of a task. Even this short novel I wrote tonight, barely scratches the surface. But all I can do is try. And if it enriches someone else, that’s all I can hope for. I have a tattoo of Mark on my left forearm – a cartoon he made of himself probably 15+ years ago. It’s my daily reminder of everything he gave to me.

I hope you find healing for your wounds too.