Boise airport before he left
RIP Cole K.
*** Any responses appreciated. It’s sherdog. Be honest. but this just happened and I’m just trying to think of every angle.
My friend Cole had off-and-on substance abuse issues, he once ODd in my living room when we’d been getting high with friends, he used IV, and I didn’t. Cole was 24. We got him help, he was fine. Months later he was cleaned up, working a good job. Cole was homeless in Boise, ID. His parents were good people but kicked him out.
4 months after getting a job and saving money for a place, he gets fired for showing up to work after drinking. They fired him and told his probation officer. He was on 1 year probation. That was Friday.
Sunday afternoon he calls me and says he’s in my living room and needs a ride to the greyhound, this is unusual, he never goes into my house without calling first. I show up, he tells me his woes, we go to his moms a mile away, he gets his things, we come back to my place. he sleeps on my couch for 4-5 hours, I’m thinking he’ll sleep it off. The whole time I rationalize the situation and tell him that even if he violates his probation he’s gonna do maybe a week in jail. He’s depressed and determined to leave. Tells me he has to leave. We watch the bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home and drink box wine, he says he’s never coming back to Boise.
***Cole had been smoking weed, doing shrooms, and get hitting the vein from Friday after he got fired to Saturday night before he showed up to my place on Sunday.
At this point he seems set on going and I tell him “sometimes more is lost by inaction than the wrong action”, I think it’s Confucian and might console him.
He says “yeah Confucius’ dead dog?”
He buys a ticket to New York on my phone, I drive him to the airport, he asks me to play “It’s alright Ma I’m only bleeding”.
He gets on a plane, 15 hours later he dies in Bushwick at his old spot, they find him in my blue Columbia in a cafe bathroom. His mom called me at 6pm today asking if I knew anything about the lead-up to his departure.
Is this my fault?