INTERMISSION

A WRITER TAKES PAUSE TO CONSIDER....

How watching films helped him to grieve for his friend.

JAMIE GRAHAM @JAMIE_GRAHAM9

Are we gonna jump or jerk off?’

This was the last text message I received from Gary, one of my best friends since I was 12. It was sent at 11.57pm on Friday 29 September 2023, and a week later I got a phone call telling me that he’d died of a heart attack. He was 50.

‘Are we gonna jump or jerk off?’ No more. Just those words. I’d replied with, ‘Brokenglass reflections, show your flesh eaten away.’ No more. Just those words.

It’s something we’d done since we’d first got mobile phones in the late 90s – sending each other quotes from our favourite movies and music. Sometimes we’d then move on to a general catch-up, sometimes a phone call. But often that was it. Nothing else was needed. Just a few familiar words by way of reaching out and stirring up cherished memories of our shared youth.

I awakened on Saturday 30 September to that particular message and grinned as I pictured us sitting in Gary’s living room watching Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Utah prepare to fling himself out of a plane in Point Break. No doubt Gary – or Garfield, as we always called him – similarly grinned when he received my reply. He probably thought of us cruising our small town in his black Corsa, smoking cigarettes with the windows down and Slayer blaring.

Garfield, like myself, like many teenagers, was obsessive about his passions. When he was into a band, they soundtracked his life. And when he loved a movie, he watched it on loop until he could quote it verbatim. His favourite films included Highlander, Cape Fear, Stand by

‘In the week leading up to the funeral, I rewatched his favourite films. I watched them through his eyes’

Me, The Lost Boys, Once Were Warriors, This Is Spinal Tap and The Green Mile, and countless times over the years I awoke to messages such as ‘Hello, pretty’, ‘Counsellor… could you be there?’ and ‘How are those maggots?’ When I got that phone call telling me of his sudden passing, I couldn’t believe that I’d never again receive a quote. There are far bigger considerations – Gary’s partner and children, for starters – but that was the thing that weirdly stuck. And I still can’t believe it, five turbulent weeks later.

In the week leading up to the funeral, at which my body rose to its feet and walked to the podium in slow motion to deliver the tribute in an underwater voice, I rewatched Garfield’s favourite films. I watched them through his eyes, knowing his favourite bits, and it was both a deeply saddening and gladdening experience. I could feel his presence but also an unfillable void. When my dad died 22 years ago, I pushed the pain down, down, down as far as it would go, and refused to peek at it, ever. With Gary, I was determined to invite it in and process it. How that works out we’ll see down the line, though right now I still check my phone expecting a quote.

I can’t compute that the person who was my ‘ride or die’ in my teens and 20s, and who I still thought of every single day despite us not meeting up in the last 10 years, is gone.

The loss sent me spinning to Stand by Me. When Gary and I first viewed it together, aged 14, we became obsessed, watching it over and over. Well, I watched it again before the funeral, and the ending hit harder than ever – Chris Chambers fading away as Gordie’s voiceover tells of his BFF’s premature death and says, ‘Although I hadn’t seen him in more than a decade, I know I’ll miss him forever.’ Cut to the final lines of Gordie’s novella on the word processor: ‘I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?’