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A Prayer for the Lost; Evan’s Song – Eulogy of an Epoch; Verses for Adam

Sep. 22 family, personal, poetry, sourbrains Comments

It’s somewhere after 4:00am on a Thursday in September, the sound of rain on the aluminum flashing is pattering away outside my windows, and sleep eludes me again. When I can’t sleep, my mind races on about a million different things at any given point in time. To cope with some of these thoughts that gnaw at me incessantly, sometimes I feel myself inspired to write. Sometimes what comes out is complete and utter nonsense; sometimes it’s something that might be worth sharing.

Evan H. Garcelon

Tonight I believe I’m ready to share something that may perhaps hold some kind of meaning to those who may still sometimes be searching for it, as I myself continue to do. In the early months of this year, two friends were lost to me. Lost to us. Those of you who knew them know the pain all too well that was felt by all who were fortunate enough to have been a part of their brief allotment of time here on this earth. Though the path of the afterlife is a thing of which I profess no knowledge or particular prevailing belief, I would like to think that these two souls are still part of this existence; are still a part of the energy we carry with their memory.

Adam C. Aries

I don’t know what may come after this, if we will be reunited with those we’ve loved in some grand, elaborate paradise among the clouds; if there’s a Heaven or a Hell, if there are angels and demons, reincarnation, an eternity of nothing… and I’m not really sure I ever want to know until the time comes for me to experience it for myself, but I want to believe that there’s something good to come of what time we are given. I want to believe that our time is something we actually are given. To know that being conscious of our fleeting moments here with eachother are worth something more than just a passing thought.

With that said, I’ve written two pieces of unpolished expression about the people and the experience of losing them. Call them poems, prose, songs, I’m not really sure what they are or what they may become as my thoughts on the matter continue to evolve, and with them, more writing. This is just what’s come out of me in the wake of their passing. I have been reluctant to share them up until now, and I’m not even sure what drives me to do so now, on this particular night. Perhaps it’s sleep deprivation that leads to an obsessive need to write, perhaps it’s something more; who knows. But here is what I’ve written, my only hope is that it may make sense to some of you, the way the process of writing it has helped me make some remote kind of sense of what I can only define as senseless tragedy.

A Prayer for the Lost; Evan’s Song

We’ve all been given chances
We could elude or could evolve
Whoever knew one last romance would
Be the ledge from which you’d fall

Now your voice an echo in my mind
Could always sense the smile inside
I saw you walk the distant shoreline
But never watched you wave goodbye

This sterile, indifferent entity
It turns a man to what he’s not
Can’t put words to what you meant to me
But I know the enemy you fought

When all the rest is burned away
Erase the sorrow and decay
There lies you

Beyond the battles that you waged
Was something innocent and brave
There lies you

You’d just barely begun to bloom

I believe that you had the strength to
Put down the demons that drove you into
The embrace of the dark charade

With so many words left unspoken to you
I know damn well we lost you too soon
One last time… and the choice was made

We’ve all been given choices man
A chance to accept or to refuse
Some we never want to make again
But some we win and some we lose

Now I know the demon well my friend
And I understand its clever ruse
But i just wasn’t ready, man
Why the hell’d you have to choose?

You were so strong, you’d been through it all
Couldn’t nothin’ ever fuck with you
And now you rest in the earth my friend
What the hell are we to do?

So I say…

Sleep
Sleep sweetly friend
And I will pray for you

Dream
Dream of sorrow’s end
Keep the memories I cling to

Scream
Scream in denial again
Until there’s nothing left to do

Please
Don’t close the coffin’s lid
Wasn’t ready to lose you too

Eulogy of an Epoch; Verses for Adam

Wrap this urn with reverence here
And solidfy
This hesitant urge and fading fear
To break and cry

Given years, a brotherhood found
And in time
You’ve returned us tears, passed without sound
Or saying goodbye

Vision monochrome and broken down
By words that go unspoken now
And this world feels like foreign ground
This theif I can’t abide

If there a God so exists
He takes from ours the best
Exchanged for holes within our chests
And casts us aside

We are but fragile muscle
And fractured, brittle bone
Forsake us, and we die

As long as I am breathing and alive
I will be grateful for myself and mine
But I can’t beleive it had to be your time

You’ve been ripped away, you’re gone
Your journey ended now and done
Beloved brother, friend and son

I must close my eyes against this mad design
Turn my tear-stained face away
And just silently drift on

And within the space of a stuttered sigh
I must learn to say goodbye

Thank you for entertaining my ramblings this far. It is a significant event for me to be able to share my own personal brand of expression. While I admit that sharing these things puts me in a state of uncomfortable vulnerability, I’m told it’s healthy to get it out of me. It helps me to release some of the frustration, some of the anger, the hurt that I feel on a level which I’m not often able to speak about. It is not my intention, and I certainly hope these have not revisited wounds too painfully, and I mean no arrogance in assuming, but perhaps it’s added a little strength to the sutures already in place.

At least, that’s what it does for me.

[r.b.]

Tags: Adam, Aries, Epoch, Eulogy, Evan, Garcelon, Lost, Prayer, Song, Verses

A Few Parting Words for Adam, the Too Soon Departed.

Mar. 27 Local, personal, social media, sourbrains Comments

Dedicated - Loyal - Devoted - Faithful

It is with a great sadness weighing on my shoulders that I write this tonight. The details are unimportant, but essentially through circumstances beyond my control, and mostly beyond my realm of comprehension, I was unable to take part in the celebration of Adam’s life that was held earlier this evening, which I had with all my heart hoped to be present for. I wanted genuinely nothing more than to be surrounded by friends, sharing in the love and memory of so exceptional a human being as Adam.

Thus again I find myself writing to help pacify the anxiety, to wipe away the tears shed in sorrowful remembrance, and to relieve the hurt of my absence, but more deeply, more heavily, his own.

So I have a few additional things I’d like to share about Adam, just another small collection of things I’ve given thought to in the past few days. My hope is that any of you reading this little blog of mine might be able to relate to my experience of having known him, or maybe even hopefully crack a smile in spirited memory.

As I said in my previous entry, I had the miraculous good fortune of meeting Adam in the 10th grade, where after getting to know him beyond his fascinating exterior, we shared what I’d like to think of as a very unique circle of friends, of all kinds. As I’ve said he was an intimidating character, very boisterous and animated, but at the same time one of the most accepting and non-judgmental people I could ever hope to know.

Being friends with Adam was a little like making friends with a hurricane. On the outside he was as loud, bright, thunderous, chaotic and unpredictable as they come. But inside, there was this inexplicable calm… a center, composed of intrinsic fortitude and integrity. He was fiercely loyal, and equally compassionate. I had never met, nor have I met since anyone who so thoroughly, yet gracefully defied categorization.

The Loud, Proud & Punk V.o.D.

He was more than just a good friend to me; in years younger, he was more like a brother in some respects than my own blood. I can remember sometimes catching myself wishing that had actually been the case. He taught me a few fundamental things about self-respect, about being who you are, who you want to be, who it feels right to be, and to hell with what anyone else thought. He taught me a bit about standing up for yourself, and what’s right. He taught me, by example, a lot about what real self-esteem is at a time in my life when I very much needed it. I am and will always be endlessly thankful for these things.

For better or for worse, Adam had the uncanny ability to leave a mark on anyone he interacted with. He was one man, one person whose touch reached out to multitudes. There was a fire in him, or more accurately, a blazing inferno, that could never be overlooked, never be diminished, never extinguished, and certainly never destroyed. Now that flame and that intensity has simply been passed on to us. And though his passing is a sad and mournful occasion, I must say that I am profoundly happy to have had the honor of calling him my friend, and that I will carry his flame with me for the rest of my life, because he would expect nothing less.

In closing, I guess if there’s one last thing I can say about Adam… it’s that if the gates of Heaven don’t open for him, by God I hope he breaks them down.

Thank you for reading my entries, thank you for your comments, your words of support and encouragement, and most of all, thank you for being a part of Adam’s life. I know he loved his friends just as much as we all treasured him. ~ Robert S. Bishop

Tags: Adam, Aries, away, BME, BMEzine, body mod, celebration, Davis, dead, death, died, failure, friend, funeral, heart, life, nashua, nh, obituary, passed, piercer, piercing, service, services, suspension, tattoo, tattooed, tattoos, VoD, wake, Zid

Adam “ZiD” Aries: a Life All Too Brief, but a Legacy Immortal.

Mar. 23 Local, personal, social media Comments

Adam "ZiD" Aries

I find myself, perhaps for one of the first times in my life, at a loss for words on how to describe a person who so well defies description…

A son, a brother, and friend, Adam was anything but what a conventional method of characterization could encompass. I met Adam in our 10th grade English class, thirteen years ago, the crazy bastard, and as near as I can tell, he hadn’t really changed a bit since. (Except for maybe the hordes of ink and that amazing, totally sweet moustache.) I was honestly intimidated as hell by Adam at first, being a quiet and incredibly socially inept individual… but after some good-natured prodding, this guy accepted me like a brother, for the awkward, old-man-hat-wearing weirdo I was. After getting to know him, I will always remember him as one of the most outwardly abrasive, but inwardly kind-hearted, accepting, and by all accounts incredibly dynamic individuals I’ve ever known. And I use the term “individual” with every humanly possible implication the word has to offer. He was never, ever what someone else wanted him to be. He was for better or for worse, always entirely himself, and I always did and still do have a massive amount of respect for him for just that quality alone, to speak nothing of his many other positive attributes. His example alone was an enormous inspiration to me in my formative years to come out of my own shell and figure out who I was, whatever that turned out to be, anyone else’s opinion be damned. I wish I had gotten the chance to thank him for that.

I remember one particular week when we were both around 18, where his family was out of town for the week and I was having a horrible mess of my own family troubles, and he not only trusted me to watch his house while he wasn’t there, but let me stay there the entire week till things cooled off with my own family and they [edit: allowed me to come back to my own home.] Many an incredibly fun night was had during that week with Adam and many of our other friends, getting our drink on (Schlitz, of course,) talking like we were straight out of an old, overdubbed kung-fu movie, making what became known in certain circles as the “Nasty Sammich,” and Adam teaching me that size didn’t always give you the upper hand in a fight when you were getting elbows slammed into your ribs. Or that regardless of who else I beat, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let me kick his ass in an arm-wrestling match. All in good-natured fun, of course.

I remember his apprenticeship at a piercing shop in Nashua, NH where I got my first helix piercings done in my left ear. Adam had informed me that I could get them at a pretty nice discount since he was apprenticing there. So I went and had them done, and I think that is the only time in my life I had ever seen Adam nervous. So nervous he actually apologized for not being able to immediately be an expert at it. So dedicated to his craft was he, that he took it that seriously. This dedication led him to become an incredibly talented body piercing artist, as I’m sure most of you already know. Unfortunately, through circumstances since then, those helix piercings have long since closed over, but I will always remember them and Adam as the one having shoved that needle through my ear a few times. I really find myself wishing now that I still had them as a reminder of my friend.

Adam prepares to punch me in my stupid hat, circa 10th grade.

Adam, from the moment you exited the womb, until the second your heart stopped beating, you were always, unapologetically, unequivocally YOU. You were a mere handful of months younger than me, but I looked up to you in so many ways that you’ll never know. There’s a jagged hole ripped in the fabric of the world that no one else could ever even hope to fill with you gone. It’s not fair that you’ve been taken from us, and it’s not right. But man, with every thought of you that enters my head always comes admiration, respect, and the love of a brother lost. You were a good friend, and a good person. Those you loved and whose lives you touched will always remember you for the incredible man you were. It’s hard to entertain the notion of just how many will mourn you. You were an amazing human being, and never once made any concessions for who you were. Never. It is with great sorrow that I say I only wish that I had gotten to spend more time with you while you were here. I am proud as fucking hell to have known you, and even more so to have been able to call you my friend. I will always wear your memory and your friendship like a badge of honor, and I am really going to miss you, Adam. ~ Robert S. Bishop

Newest information: Adam C. Aries SERVICES: A Celebration of Adam’s Life will be held, 1-3 and 5-8pm, Saturday, March 26, 2011 at Davis Funeral Home, One Lock St. in Nashua, NH. Family and friends are invited to attend. Also, there will be a party at ZuZu (Middle East), 474 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, MA, on Saturday April 2, 2011 from 12 to 4pm, to Honor and Celebrate Adam’s Life.

You can find his published obituary on [The Boston Globe/Legacy.com Website Here.]

You can find and sign a guestbook in his honor at [The Legacy.com Website Here.]

The same obituary can also be found on [The Nashua Telegraph Website's Obituaries.]

Another article honoring Adam’s life can be found [On the Boston Phoenix's Website.]

BMEzine.com‘s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Rachel [Had This to Say About Adam.]

On April 2nd, The Middle East aka ZuZu is throwing a [Party to Honor the Life of VJ ZiD.]

Tribute to our friend Adam “ZiD” Aries & great photos from [Suspension.Org/HookLife.]

There is also another obituary and guestbook on [The Davis Funeral Home's Website] if you click on “obituaries” you’ll find Adam’s name at or near the top of the list, click on that and you will be able to view the obituary and also find links to sign the guestbook on there.

Please feel free to re-post this information whenever and wherever you find a place for it, and I encourage you all to share your own personal experiences and memories of Adam in the comments section below this post. We all really need reasons to smile right now.

As a quick aside, over 1,500 hits later in only two days, I would like to personally thank everyone who has taken the time to read this little missive that I’ve authored, linked to it, re-posted it, shared it, and ‘liked’ it. It genuinely warms my heart to see just how many lives Adam’s indomitable spirit truly did touch, and the overwhelming number of those people who cared enough to take the time to read what to me are just the humble thoughts and memories of an old high-school friend. It makes me feel that with my meager words, I’ve done something that really matters. Thank you all so much, in no small way, for helping me be able to process and get through this. – Rob

Update: Photos and Video from the ZuZu [Party to Honor the Life of VJ ZiD.]

ZuZuApril22011.MOV