The memorials have already started on Steve's Facebook page. My friend Ian told me that Steve was still on life support the last time he talked to his dad, but they were basically planning on taking him off it to let him pass in his own bed instead of a hospital. It's entirely possible that he passed after Ian talked to his dad, hence the memorials.

I can't do the Facebook memorial just yet. Not until Ian confirms it to me on the phone.

There are just so many memories that I'm running through my head. Meeting him in Kent Dining Hall over Move-In Weekend for the 2007-2008 school year. We got stoned and then laughed our asses off while eating burgers at the now-defunct Korner Diner. The time he listened to me on the phone while I told him about my mother's liver cancer scare. The many, many times myself and his residents would party in his room. Or the time he hung out at my house, and he bitched about his off/on girlfriend while we made fun of this awful horror movie called Tamara. The summer of '09, when he had a big ass dorm to himself and we'd hang out in his room and watch reruns of That 70's Show. Or the time at Buffalo Wild Wings where I told him about how I had been accepted into a grad school 5 hours away from home, and Steve told me that maybe it might end up being the best time of my life. (Which it was.)

I hung out with a friend tonight at Homegrown...one crying jag happened, but I was able to get it together. I decided afterwards that I'd walk around University of Delaware at night, and walked up to Dickenson, which was the dorm he was an R.A. for:

I walked up there, a very familiar path that I walked for the many, many times I hung out with him and the friends I made because of him at Dickenson Hall, and I got sad. Then I walked around the building, and saw this bench that was built in the back patio of the dorm...a memory hit me.

It was the last week of college for us...Steve, myself, and some random residents were sitting on the bench at at night and just talking. I can't remember remember the particulars of the conversation, just that there was this talk about ghosts and a girl who looked like JWoww from Jersey Shore until she got hit with the Freshmen 15. It wasn't a deep, meaningful memory...but it was night where I was hanging out with my friend Steve, and I knew it would be one of the last ones. We were young, we were about to move on from each other, and while I was inclined to be a dramatic mess about it, Steve just had this attitude- we'd always be each other's boys. I wanted to have this big good-bye moment with him, as I was weaned on the teary good-byes that accompanied series finales and the like. But with Steve, as he basically put it- there's no need for a big good-bye, because we'll always be friends, and we'd see each other when we'd see each other.

I just stared at that fucking bench, man, and then the sobbing started again. I couldn't stop. I circled around the building, and stood on the sidewalk in front of the entrance with glass windows that showed off the stairs that Steve would always come down from to let me in on the many nights that we hung out in his dorm. Some illogical, little kid part of me really wanted to see him bound down those stairs and open up the door for me. (Just like how earlier tonight I called Steve's number, wanting to hear his voice.) Futile hope, of course. This is 2013 and it's not 2010 and my friend Steve is never going to bound down those steps again to let me in so we could get faced with his residents in the dorm.

So many memories, so fucking intense that I can barely stand it. So I started talking outloud to Steve...like the dorm was him. I told Steve that he was a brother to me, and it was a privilege being his friend for 6 years. I told Steve how fucking glad I was that he decided to walk up to me in that lunch room six years ago, and that he taught me so much about what being a friend is. I told him that I'd never forget him as long as I lived, and I'd miss him for the rest of my life. I tried to say as much as I could, like if I did, somewhere out there Steve would know how much I loved him and how much I feel like knowing him made me a better person.

Then I walked back to my car, and got hit with yet another intense crying jag. It took me awhile to pull myself together, but I was able to get it together enough to drive home. Now I feel calm again. It's weird how that happens- I get hit with such forceful emotions that I can do little to stop, and a calm takes over. I don't know how long it's going to be like this- I've dealt with grief before but not as sustained and intense as this.

It's just so weird, and surreal. Two or so months ago, I was sympathizing with the cast of Glee trying to deal with Cory Montieth's heroin overdose, and wondering how they got through it. I'm not so much in their shoes as I'm not an actor on a t.v. show, but I'm in their shoes now in terms of dealing with the fact that someone you loved died of an accidental drug overdose. The emotions I'm having are so fucking complicated- love for Steve, joy that I had him in my life, and just this underlying anger that he left in the way that he did.

I just don't know how I'm getting through this. I really don't know.