These pictures are from the time I invited a bunch of friends over to my mom’s place for a home-cooked meal.  My mom’s always eager to feed people, and I just really wanted to do something nice for my friends.  A few of them were from out of state, so their own homes were too far to get to for a Sunday dinner, and having been raised with food as a love language, it kinda seemed like a no brainer to me.  It was a good time. Everyone was blown away by my mom’s skills, and it gave me great joy to see everyone fall asleep on the sofas with food comas. Jason didn’t fall asleep – I would’ve had photographic evidence of that – though he did laugh at those who did!

For dessert there were cannolis from Catania’s Bakery on Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood, Queens (best cannolis in all of NYC and it’s not even a debate), and I’m pretty sure everyone went back to their dorm rooms with additional plates of food because that’s just standard operating procedure where I’m from.  

As I grieve, I find myself focusing on the details of these very specific moments in time. What we were eating, wearing, what song was playing, what date it was, what time it was, what else was happening on that same day…?  For me, diving head first into the minutiae of it all is helpful, almost shielding, because I realize that if I let myself zoom back out, I see the big picture and reality hits again — Jason is gone.  So diving into the forensics brings comfort. Maybe it’s distraction, maybe it’s avoidance and denial, but maybe its just my brain desperately trying to travel back in time, recreate that moment and try to keep my friend alive…

…and only because I got curious about that newspaper on the coffee table, it was October 5th, 2003.  On that day the Yankees beat the Twins to get into the ALCS, and on the night before that some dude got mauled by a tiger in Harlem.