In Memory of Josh Skunk

I know at some point, in everyone's life, they stop to wonder… what will happen, when I'm gone?

Who will miss me? Who will remember me? Will I be forgotten?

Is anyone I know a better person, for having met me?

When I'm gone, will I have mattered?

Sometimes, when I'm not feeling good about myself, I try to convince myself that no one will miss me. No one will remember me. That I have not made any sort of positive impact on the world, but this is a totally unfounded, and totally unreasonable thing to believe… and deep down, I don't believe it, and I don't think anyone should.

No matter who you are… no matter how smart, how stupid, how good or bad you think you are… no matter how significant or insignificant you think you are… whether or not you think you are loved… whether or not you feel you're universally hated… and even if you are… you matter.

You matter, so much.

How do I know this. It's hard for me to think about, without being overwhelmed- but I feel like this is something I have to tell you. I know this because I have lived 26 years, and I had never truly known what it felt like, to lose someone you love. I could not even think about it, because the thought terrified me. But the truth is, we will ALL lose someone we love, and we will miss them. They matter, to us.

I lost my grandmother suddenly to cancer over the holidays last year. She was brought to the emergency room on christmas eve, and she passed away the morning of new year's eve. She was 72 years old, and loved, and had babies, and a loving husband, and grand-babies. And although I miss her, every day, I know she lived her life, she was happy most of the time, and although death never makes sense, I was able to experience how losing her brought my family closer, and I was able to hold her hand, and tell her I loved her before she took her last breath.

But sometimes, when people leave us it's a little harder, and it seems a little more senseless, and you're left wondering, if you ever really had a chance to show this person how much you really cared, or even if you ever really realized how much you really cared… it's hard.

About a month ago, I lost a very close friend, his name was Josh Marshall, and I loved him, even if he didn't know it. He was 27 years old.



Even now, it's hard to know what to say… even now, after I have hugged the people who loved him, after I've honored him and thought of him. After I've gone through the feelings of guilt, over the possibility that I could have been a better friend, over the falling out we had years ago, over the possibility that when he died, he didn't know, how much he mattered.

I don't know what to say… but what I'm thinking of now, is all the times he was there for me, and I for him. When I felt alone, like I had no friends, Josh was there. When I could not help myself, he helped me. When I thought no one loved me, he told me he did. When he had no place to go, he knew he could stay with me. We made some bad decisions, as friends.. but I think those decisions made us naked to each other as humans, and I can only pray, to whoever will listen, that he understood that somehow it was only a matter of time before we saw and loved each other for who we were… which is what all of us are to each other, I promise… two humans in the world, who had love in our hearts, who were trying to show each other in broken ways that we were not alone.

When our friend Dave told me Josh was in the hospital, that he'd tried to kill himself, I was angry. I thought, how stupid and selfish. But when I got the call at 7 in the morning that Wednesday, that we'd lost him, that he was gone… that he'd suffocated using nitrous oxide and putting a bag over his head, I cried… for days. Out of shock, out of grief and guilt… and for a large part because I worried that he never knew how important he was, to so many people, and how much I cared for him, and loved him.

I didn't know, if he knew. I wasn't sure. We'll never know if he meant to do it on purpose, or if it was an accident. Josh was a complicated, and troubled individual. He was reckless, and self-destructive.

But we all knew how much he loved music, and how much he loved sharing it with people. We all knew how much he loved the thrill of the celebration, and that he had ideas, and dreams, and how much he loved to share those things. He used to call me, even after we'd stopped speaking, to tell me how much he loved me and missed me. He was my best friend.

We'll never know what was going through his mind, then.. and either way, he's gone… and I think about all the things he wanted to do, and was excited to pursue, and it's tragedy in my heart, and no matter how I celebrate who he was, I mourn for his dreams, every day.

I never understood, why people needed a concept of life after death. Why we needed heavens and hells, or reincarnation, or ghosts. Maybe this is why I cried so much, when he first left us. But something happened to me, and it changed me, and I want to share it with you. This is my story of how Josh taught me something about magic, about life after death, and what it really means.

When I found out Josh was gone, I was on a ship, about to set sail to Jacksonville. I immediately bought a plane ticket to Boston, I felt an urgent need to be with the people who loved him, it was all I could think about, and the only thing I could come up with that would quell the impossibly deep ache in my heart. For four days I was alone at sea with my thoughts about Josh, and about why, and about what it meant.

Although some might think four days alone, thinking about the death of someone you love would be harder, the blue of the ocean for miles around, the absence of land for days brought a tranquility to my soul. I think it gave me a chance to breathe, and some part of me realized that the timing of it, though tragic, was a blessing. That time swallowed up by the blue ocean saved me, and gave me some strength and peace to stand the intensity of what was to come.

I arrived in New York and Alex picked me up at the airport. I wish I could tell you, what Alex and Josh and I meant to each other but I feel like it's something only Alex, Josh and I will ever understand… which is why hugging Alex, and feeling his tears fall on my shoulder, and mine on his was so NECESSARY. I can only explain it this way… there are times, when you are with people, that everything feels right in the world. You feel complete, among them. For a while, that was Alex, Josh and I. Together, we were complete.

I guess it could be called some kind of love. We loved each other, the three of us.

We all have our special memories of him but here was ours, here is what Josh and Alex and I do together in my dreams and memories where he is still with us- Alex and I come over to Josh's apartment near U Mass with our records and a big bottle of Jim Beam, and Josh cooks dinner for everybody at the apartment.

In the summer, we barbecued and drank beers and Tim and Eddie and Theresa would come over… Josh would roll spliffs and we would smoke them and drink Jim Beam out of the bottle all night. From early afternoon until the last person passed out, we played records together, three records each, rotating… Alex, Josh, me. Alex, Josh, me. We would do this at least once a week for hours, usually until 6 or 8 in the morning the next day. When everyone woke up, we'd go to brunch and Katrine would drive us, and even though it was obvious they loved the shit out of each other, they'd spend the whole time insulting each other while we sat awkwardly in the back seat.

We did this every week, for about a year and then things changed. Josh got kicked out of his apartment for not paying rent, I had my own issues to sort through, Alex moved to New York City… and we grew apart… life happened… I guess.

We had decided to go to Boston to honor Josh in his city, so we went about picking records from Alex's collection that reminded us of him. There were a lot, but there was one in particular… which was Punch Drunk 002 by Peverelist - Erstwhile Rhythm/ The Grind that we spent a significant amount of time searching for.

Josh used to play this one all the time. It was one of his favorite records… and for some reason this was the one that stood out most to us, the one record that would forever remind us of Josh, and those many, many times we'd play together, which happens only in our heads now like memories, or dreams.

When we arrived in Boston, I went straight to Twisted Village in Harvard Square. I used to accompany Josh to this used record store once a month or so to help him carry records to sell when he needed money, which was pretty much all the time. Like a lot of things in Boston, it hadn't changed much, and the used electronic section was in the place it had always been. Alex and I stood side by side, sifting through the records. I didn't know what I was looking for… maybe I was hoping one of Josh's records would be there, but I wasn't seeing any dubstep at all in the bin… and then there it was.

I picked it up and held my hand over my mouth in disbelief. The sleeve was worn dirty around the edges of the record, like it'd been stuffed into a bag with too many records in it and they'd pressed together and created rubbings with the filth of too many basement parties. The hole in the middle had been taped over and re- pierced, probably to reinforce the record's grip on the table after too many times being played- and the sides were marked "A" and "B" unceremoniously on each side with familiar hand-writing.

"Alex," I said,

"I think this was Josh's."

He tells me, it couldn't be, Josh would never sell THIS record, it was one of his favorites… but part of me just knows, this is Josh's record, that he loved, that he played a million times, and beat up, and sold because he needed money, for something, maybe rent, maybe a burger, maybe whippets.

I took it up to the man at the counter, the same man who'd always been at the counter, who I'm sure Josh has sold many, many records to. "Who sold you this record?" I asked him.

He told me, he'd had 3 copies of that record, that it was hard to say who it came from.

On my phone, I pulled up a photograph I'd taken of Josh climbing into the window of my third floor apartment one summer, when we'd had a barbecue. I remember, he'd kicked everyone out of my apartment, tucked me in and locked the door behind him that night because I was too drunk to do it myself.

As soon as I saw the recognition in the man's face, I burst into tears. I barely made him out saying, 'Yes! That's him, the other two were collectors so their copies were in mint condition but this guy, he was a DJ, he always played his… this was definitely his."

I just lost it right then, my heart broke, like I just realized Josh was gone, but it was more than that- something happened, when I was holding that record in my hands, I felt him give it to me, I felt Josh put it into my hands as the record store owner said "I can't ask you to pay for this, it belongs to you" and I stumbled out onto the street and onto a nearby stoop.

I didn't know what to think. I just looked at the record, and thought about Josh playing it, and it felt like when I held my grandmother's cold hand, felt it's softness, said goodbye.

Alex was crying, too. He said to me, "He wanted you to have it. Nobody should own that record but you."



I don't believe in a lot that I can't touch, or prove. I don't believe in ghosts, and I don't really believe in life after death, … at least, not in the form of heaven or hell, or ghosts or people being reincarnated into plants and animals and other people.

But I do believe what I feel, and that sometimes, when things happen, they happen in a way that helps you to make sense in an otherwise senseless world. From the second he left this world, and especially at that moment in the record store, I felt like Josh was teaching me, and comforting me. I felt like he was showing me… something.

I don't know exactly what that thing is, but I can tell you what I saw, which is people coming together out of a common love, out of a love for Josh. It was people remembering how much of an impact he had on their lives, whether he knew it or not. It was his unmistakable spirit in each and every one of us, and it was the real magic, that you just see when you realize that people die, but they never go away, that you see them everywhere, that they find ways of loving you, and being there for you, and tucking you in.

I know that as I continue to love as I have been loved, that when my life is over, I will matter. Because the people I loved, will love each other. They will love their lives, and they will honor me every moment they take a breathe. Life after death is not about mysticism, there's nothing paranormal about it. We live IN each other. We love FOR each other. Forever. Beyond the limits of our own humanity.

I feel like Josh knew how much he mattered, even if he didn't think he mattered. He knew he was loved, because he WAS loved. I wonder if he knew, if I showed him enough, and I never could have possibly shown him because loving someone, and showing them, are two different things. Between me and you, trust me, liberate yourself because love is not about evidence, but about faith. All you can do, is just love someone, do your best to show them… and while you can hope that on some conscious level you've made it clear to them, you have to KNOW, in your heart, that THEY know.

And I guess, I feel like that's what Josh has shown me. That he knew, in his heart what I knew in mine. That he mattered to me. And that he knew.