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Funerals are nothing foreign to me, but this one is alien. I sit in the pew with tears like waterfalls, like I’ve never known before. When my grandmother died I was too high to cry, too high to feel her loss even though she’d been the only one who had continued to believe there was hope for me. I’ve been to the funerals of overdosers I had known but they never pierced my heart like this one. This time everything is real, even as I try to lose it to the fog of the heroin I shot in the church’s bathroom. This time the sorrow seeps into my bones and overflows despite the endless depths of my heart.

It’s strange to hear him referred to by his full name. “Dereck was my protector and best friend when we were children,” his sister is saying in a voice whose tremors could fell skyscrapers. But he hadn’t been Dereck in a long time. He had been “Wreck” since we started stealing his father’s cigarettes in high school. His father had been a volcano of abuse, and I knew that was why he let drugs into his life. It started with Adderall and became a complex balloon figure with purposeless form. A bullet train could not have stopped him any more than it could have stopped me from following him.

I never understood the desolation of his soul until we started shooting up, forcing him to roll up his sleeves for the first time in my presence and revealing all his scars. His eyes plead with me to make him stop but I didn’t know how. It would have been akin to ending the Earth’s rotation, a task I knew I was not equal to. So instead I joined him and let his infection spread to my own heart. I took his pain upon myself and we reveled in our agony.

I know his sister’s eulogy was beautiful though I hardly heard a third of it. His use had hurt her most of all until she had to build up walls to keep her heart from breaking. Of all the people in this building that I desecrate with my presence, only her tears could fill as many oceans as my own. The walls of others were stronger than Sophia’s and they had all unleashed their tears long ago.

As Wreck’s father takes the podium I slip outside as silently as the ghost that now haunts me. I cannot bear to hear his lies. I light a cigarette and lean against the harsh brick wall. Soon Sophia comes around the corner from the back exit and joins me. She doesn’t smoke but she bums one off me for this special occasion. We do not speak; we simply take comfort in the blanket of each other’s presence.

Sophia had been there every time Wreck and I had tried to quit. She had left a hole in her wall just large enough to crawl through when such occasions arose. Together we had always believed the lies that this was going to be the last time. Together we watch as the coffin is borne out of the church and into the hearse. Silently we get into her car and follow the hearse to Wreck’s final destination. Numbly we watch as he is lowered into the ground. I hold her hand as final words are spoken. She always hated me somewhat because she saw me as an enabler, but today we draw strength from each other.

When we return to the car I light another cigarette and mentally rehearse my words. Before I can perfect them I blurt out, “he said he loved me.” A sob breaks free from the prison of my throat and I bury my head in my hand. I hear Sophia bawling beside me, her short gasps of despair punctuating her sorrow.

“He left me a message telling me he loved me the night before,” she says without looking at me. “Love” had never been part of Wreck’s vocabulary. It’s then that we realize that his death was a suicide and that we were too late to recognize the signs.