Kevin

When we’re faced with challenging times, we turn to the coping skills that have worked for us in the past. 

For me, it’s humor. 

I’ve wanted to make a comic about Kevin since the day after I learned he was gone. 

Kevin was my comic sidekick (he’d hate that I used that word) for years. 

Some people don't know this, but I drew an online comic for the better part of a decade. The website is gone now, but the images still pop up from time to time from various corners of the internet, a reminder of more carefree and whimsical times. 

Initially, my comic series was about my life with a roommate and friend that I had in college named Tom. One April Fool's, I posted a fake email that Tom has "written" (completely unbeknownst to him) about how he was too old to be a part of such silly things - and how he needed me to stop making comics about his college antics. 

Kevin saw it, didn't realize it was an April's Fools prank, and messaged me "Shit man, I'm not too old for anything. Put me in your comic." 

I confessed about the prank, but within a couple of months, my comic character was out of college and working in community mental health with his new friend Kevin. 

And Kevin took to life in comics like a fish to water. He would text me ideas he had, and I’d do the same. Normally, his ideas centered around his affinity for quoting Al Pacino when he was drunk - and my responses centered around explaining to him that there was material there for one, maybe two comics max. Still, the love for the craft was there - and we both fed into and off of each other's creative drive. 

Occasionally, Shelly would have to step in and nix an idea because it was too depraved. 

Usually, those moments were preceded with Kevin and I laughing until we cried. We were always on the same wavelength. 

I can still hear Shelly saying that she’d never play Cards Against Humanity with us again because Kevin and I were so in sync that we guessed each other’s card every. single. time. 

He was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, but amazingly, he HATED awkward humor. No matter how much I tried to sell him on The Office, he just couldn’t get over the cringe that Michael brought to the show. 

He said it made him physically uncomfortable. He routinely skipped lunches with Shelly and me for the six months or so that we watched Netflix in my office during our lunch break at Bill Willis. 

It’s hard to miss someone that wouldn’t want to be missed. He hated people being sad, almost as much as he hated having attention on him. 

I’m still grieving, and it hasn’t been easy. I think I’ve cried more this year than I have during the other 37 years of my life combined. I've cried at an Adam Sandler song. I've cried while drawing on my ipad. I've cried during multiple episodes of Ted Lasso. Hell, sometimes if I breathe in too deep, my body is just like "We crying again?" 

Thankfully, with a guy as well-loved as Kev - I am surrounded by others who also remember him as fondly as I do. 

Years ago, Kevin brought us a decorative skull as a souvenir from a trip he took to Mexico. To spite him, we put the tacky looking thing on our mantle - and over time, it became a memorial to people that Shelly and I had lost. 

Around the same time as the purchase of the skull, Kevin sent me a topless picture to make me laugh. 

I told him I was going to hang onto the picture until I had the perfect opportunity to use it.

It’s bittersweet that we ended up using it for his spot in our shrine to those that we miss, but deep down I know he would have laughed. 

He would have insisted we take it down - but he would have laughed. 

That’s the thing about losing someone like Kevin though, isn’t it? When it’s fun to rile them up - you never know how much you’ll miss them being around to stop you from doing the things that would.

The last year of Kevin's life, I wasn't a good friend. We texted once every three months or so and apologized for not keeping in better touch. We made tentative plans to meet up "once things settle down" - unaware that things weren't going to settle down until long after my best friend was gone. 

I miss him so much. 

I have a notepad open on my phone that I use to "text" him whenever I think about him, and it's honestly a rotation of berating him for being gone, and then telling him stupid things - like the news that they're making a Bob's Burgers movie. 

Kevin was one of those stars that just burned too bright. His laughter and happiness were contagious, but he never truly understood how much he meant to the people he loved. 

I can't think about barbecue wings, fire jolly ranchers, plain burgers, cotton candy, fireworks, poker, or Captain Morgan and Dr. Pepper without remembering him. 

I wish I could tell him how much I love him. 

I wish he was here to tell me how dumb this post was.