November 8, 2010 one year ago.
One year ago, this happened.
That Sunday was just like any day. Except Mike was gone recording an album with his band all day and night. I was pregnant and exhausted and not in the mood to be solo parenting. My hormones were in over drive and I was super pissed that Mike was gone so long so the best thing for me to do was just go to bed and get over it. I finally got comfortable when my phone rang. But damnit! It’s in the kitchen! And I don’t want to get up! And since it’s 11-ish on a Sunday night its probably just Mike telling me he is on his way home.
But it wasn’t Mike. It was our friend Ryan. Which made me start to panic. So I called Mike. And he said that Ryan called him too and that he would call him back and let me know what’s going on. As soon as I hung up with Mike, my voicemail alert went off. But I was too scared to listen because something in me knew it just wouldn’t be good. And when Mike called me back, my hands were shaking as I picked up the phone. I thought for sure something had happened to Angela or one of our friends. Mike was sobbing. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. I just kept hearing “Jerry’s dead”. Jerry. Jerry? Jerry who was just in town Jerry? Jerry one of my most favorite people ever Jerry? Jerry Mike’s good friend Jerry? What? How? Mike could hardly form a sentence, let alone get in to the details so he got off the phone and I bravely hit the voicemail button. “He fell down a fucking elevator shaft and died.” Ryans words shot straight through me and my heart was beating out of my chest. I immediately called my dad and asked if he had any frequent flier miles so that we could get Mike out to New York. And then I went online and googled “Jerry Fuchs” and a stream of articles came up. Photos attached to them, Jerry staring right back at me. “He fell down a fucking elevator shaft and died”. That sentenced looped in my head for hours.
Mike finally came home and went right to bed. But neither of us slept. Everytime I closed my eyes, I saw Jerry falling backwards. My eyes would shoot back open. Over and over and over again. Waking up the next day was weird. Mike took the day off of work and I spent a better part of the morning rifling through news articles and deciding which ones were okay for Mike to read and which were a little too detailed and gruesome. But there was no avoiding what had happened. The story started popping up everywhere. At one point not only had it shown up on cnn.com’s front page but it also even filtered it’s way to the celebrity gossip websites I frequent. The ones that talk about an eminent Britney Spears breakdown and whether Brangelina is together or not. Jerry was everywhere.
But then the tributes started rolling in. Beautiful things written by people who knew him the best. Or people who never met him at all, fans who saw him drum once and were never the same. And things started feeling okay again because it felt good to read about how funny and kind Jerry was.
I wrote this a few nights later. And I stared at the cursor for a good 20 minutes before I started to type. Because nothing I could write would ever do him justice. And one year later, I found myself staring at the cursor again.
Life moves fast when you have kids. One day you have a sweet, little baby and then before you know it, you are planning tours of Kindergartens in the area. In fact today, I mentioned to my brother in law that they would have to come back in town for Jacksons first birthday because it’s only a few months away – when did that happen? With that said, it seems like Jerry died years ago. It’s singlehandedly the only thing in my life that has ticked by. And I can’t pinpoint why. While most will say, “I can’t believe its already been a year”, I find myself thinking, “I can’t believe its only been a year.”
But I know this much is true, Jerry was hands down one of the most incredible people I have ever met. He was our family’s number one fan. I hope he knew that we were in his corner too. We still are.
(Jerry was a fantastic drummer and there are dozens of youtube videos to prove it. But this is what I like to see – my pal Jerry joking around, laughing that great laugh. I miss. I miss.)
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