Want to hear the cruelest irony of my emotional life? I wrote "I'll Just Smile" about Matthew Richard Shumway, a song about liking him but being too shy to tell him and having no intention of ever doing so and being content the way things were between us. He died without knowing that song was about him.
He passed away on a Wednesday, July 20th, two days after I drove to Shands in Gainesville to see him in the ICU. A couple weeks prior to that he came into my mind for some reason, I don't know why. I had a boyfriend at the time, so I dismissed it. A long time ago I hid him from my facebook News Feed because I didn't want to be reminded of him, because I was trying to not like him and get over the whole somethingness/nothingness of the whole thing. Of course, with him comatose in a hospital bed and attached to a dozen machines, it was time to tell him everything, so I cried and recounted memories and said everything he'd deserved to hear.
You can't make this stuff up. Maybe I wouldn't feel as strongly for him as I do now if I hadn't made such an effort to keep him off my mind back when we lived in the same town. I made a conscious decision to not go after him; I could like him all I wanted, but I didn't want a drunk boyfriend, and he drank a lot. That choice was what was most healthy for me at the time.
I feel like a fool though, when I think back on the times I was sort of mean to him or ignored him. The very last time I saw him before he had his stroke was New Year's Eve 2010, and as we said our good-byes Gage had asked him, teasing me, "Shumway do you know Haylee?" Shum looked at me like the cat that ate the canary and said, "Yes, we know each other". Though we'd been acquaintances for over two years, at times with palpable emotional tension, I never felt like I knew him that well but always, always just wanted to spend some quiet time with him, play guitars or something. Like my song said, "I'd like to grow in what I know of your gentle soul by merely being near." He told me before I left, "I have unlimited texting now and we can shoot back rapid-fire messages" and I said, "Yeah, that'll be the day." He'd disappointed me so many times before; not texting me back when we first met, not replying to a facebook message I sent him once. For a second he seemed taken aback. Then his face softened as he said, "Yeah, that'll be the day." Gage, very protective of me, didn't think Shumway was good enough for me and he was proud of me for finally saying like, "No, I'm not going to get excited at the prospect of getting to know you better because I will not let you disappoint me again."
Is this honestly the last interaction I had with him? You can't make this stuff up.
I'm working on a song now about asking his permission to remember our history the way I wish it had happened. It was agony to accept my feelings for him and then see him suddenly. I would cling to my oath that I would not make a move on him, knowing full well he was entirely too shy to put the moves on me. The most forward he got was one day at the pub after a rugby match (picture me, track pants, jersey, no make-up). I said good-bye and had almost left the room when he said, "Hey Haylee?" I stopped and said, "Hey Matt?" and he looked down at the floor and mumbled, "You look really pretty today." Aaaaahhhhh!! I said thank you and went around the corner where I could giggle and jump like a teenager. When I'd confessed to Kerri and Gage that I had a crush on him, Kerri said, "How can you have a crush on Shumway!?" She didn't see what I saw, and neither did he.
You can't make this stuff up.
So how can I make art imitate life? I feel as if I haven't been very creative over the past year. There's so much more that happened between Shumway and me as nothing was happening, like the night we chatted on facebook at 3am the cloudy August night the Perseid meteor shower was on, trading youtube videos of songs we wanted the other to hear. I do want to remember everything accurately, except for the times I could've been more kind to him. One of the best was when we slow-danced on the porch at Mother's to some 1940's big band music. Pure magic. He was very good, and he confessed that his mother made him take ballroom-dancing lessons when he was younger. I still remember what it felt like to rest my face on his shoulder, to feel his cheek near my ear and the way he held my hand against his chest. And my mind wandering to the fact that I was wearing baggy khaki shorts and my crazy-lookin' "Love Is Real" Daniel Johnston t-shirt, haha.
This isn't at all where I thought this blog was going to go. I guess I needed to get this out. There are so many more memories I hope I'll always be able to recall easily. It would likely be more healthy to try to move on and find an interest in someone who hasn't been dead almost seven months, but the artist in me loves this agony. I always knew he was really special, and the fact that he was taken from us so young confirms this.
More cruel irony: the first time I went over to his house, he'd been trying to learn this song on guitar, with which I've been obsessed ever since: "Ghost" by Howie Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmlr0Jc9hPQ
