My Friend Kenneth
By Michael Woyan
Page 1 sex Page 2 drugs Page 3 sin Page 4 lust Page 5 envy Page 6 fortune Page 7 evil Page 8 pirate Page 9 thief

Page 8
He never made eye contact with me, but I'm certain he felt the weight of my message. As his eyes fixed to a distant point, I'm certain he absorbed every word.
Tension built during the week as Bernard had not been heard from, and the rapid flurry of phone calls back and forth between relatives ensued for several days until one of Kenneth's brothers was able to enter Bernard's south side apartment only to find him dead of an apparent drug overdose. Later it was determined that Bernard died of Respiratory Arrest, just as Jim Morrison of the Doors had. This was of great comfort to Kenneth and his devoutly Catholic family. The coroner had determined that the time of death was approximately 10:00pm Sunday night. It is entirely possible I was the last person to speak with Bernard alive.
Upon receiving the news, Kenneth taxied directly to Bernard's apartment and spent the following days with his family. I did not see or speak with him during this time. I never knew if Kenneth somehow felt responsible; that he should have done more. I think we all wonder things like that at one point or other in our lives. In an act of leadership, compassion, self-preservation, penance or possibly all of those motives at once, Kenneth claimed full responsibility for making the difficult and tedious final arrangements. The price of Kenneth's freedom in America was now to be paid by the hideous and horrifying nightmare of bringing the body of his lost brother back to his parents in Ireland. Of course he never spoke of it in these terms, but the terror in his eyes did.
The days that followed were a blur of manic, frenzied detail of announcements and condolences extended to relatives, price quotes, travel arrangements, planning of services, gracefully accepting clumsy tokens of respect from friends, and all the endless minutiae that can be one's salvation or one's undoing in such times of trial. That entire week, Kenneth was surrounded by his friends from the Exchange at all times, in a litany of shifts, listening to him chatter without end. He hardly slept. He hardly ate. He didn't drink. He just rattled on and on until it was time to make the dreaded journey home. I just watched over him from the other room that entire week. It was all I could do. We hardly spoke. He was not interested in making any sense of this just yet. There was a graceful sense of God at work to watch his perfectly suited emotionally unexpressive friends knowing their limitations in these matters to just look after him and show that they cared for him. He certainly didn't want to be alone to think beyond the linear during this time and they demonstrated the honor he deserved. I always suspected that Kenneth was waiting to have his epiphany on his home sod. I knew when he left that he would only be returning after Christmas for a month to settle his affairs here and return home for good.
During Kenneth's month away, my own brother showed up on my doorstep, he too, in the throes of advanced alcoholism. He was in tears, uninsured, homeless, penniless and jobless. I was unable to turn him away having witnessed Kenneth's ordeal, leaving myself with the daunting task of sobering him up, getting him employed and into a single room occupancy hotel within thirty days. He stayed in Kenneth's room without his consent, but I felt I made the choice I had to and hoped that Kenneth would understand in time. Kenneth was very firm about not bringing the world's troubles into our home. I never knew if any of this had to do with Irish superstition or not, but he, in spite of his universal compassion for other's circumstances, was quite against my liberal whims of bringing home strays. For the short term, I was successful in my brother's mission, but it was a long-term failure because the only job that I could get him was in a bar that would pay cash quickly enough for him to secure lodging after taking almost two weeks to dry him out. It was also during this time that my Mother's chronic illness took a turn for the worse and we checked her into the hospital on December twenty-third from which she never returned. She passed away not quite two months later.
The month following Kenneth's return weighed heavily on me because, in addition to the above trials, I was in messy relationships with two ex-girlfriends, one of which was a school teacher who wanted to get back together with me, but I didn't; I only wanted to remain her friend to help her through the difficulties she was attempting to overcome with depression and drug abuse. The other woman was someone I wanted to get back together with, but since she had lost a significant amount of weight, found her prospects elsewhere more interesting. Truth be told, I was afraid of being alone at the time and continued seeing both of them much longer than I should have.

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