• Bluelight
    Shrine




    A memorial
    to Bluelighters
    who have passed away

RIP ektamine

Today I read a post on here by someone who is worrying about his brother. Crying now and can't stop. I feel so bad for your brother. Brothers hold memories together, help each other out and have each others backs. You were always my boys, plural. Now you are receding further and further into the past and your brother is pushing on into the future alone without you. I don't want your brother to be alone without family when Dad and I are gone but he will. All over this house two little blonde boys grin at me from picture frames, playing together, building things together, hiking, skateboarding, surfing, pushing each other, eating; sharing all the normal mundane moments of boyhood and adolescence and finally becoming men together. My favorite picture is one of the last of the two of you together, right before you went to rehab. You are sitting with Tyler on a bench in Santa Barbara where we took you to see him before you left. You have your dreads and and both of you are in what I used to call your uniforms--board shorts and tees. There is such an obvious easiness between you. Years of love and the assumption that there will be more years. Today my heart is breaking open again, not for me, not for you; for your brother, who wanted nothing but peace and safety for you, who always believed in your goodness and strength, who no doubt thought someday you would be old guys together, laughing about your antics and trials growing up.


Been reading all the threads in the shrine today. This post especially I think hurts. I never knew caleb, can't recall any of his post, although the name seems vaguely familiar.

Thinking how much it would hurt my mom and brother if I killed myself... Spent the weekend in the woods outside with my brother. Fucking off, just wandering around trying to get lost enjoying the peace and quiet. Playing baseball with pinecones and sticks (i'm almost 30), and sword fighting with more sticks while people look at us like "wtf"... If only this wasn't like all the time...

Thanks for the reminder that our/my actions accect others whether we want them to or not.
 
Sounds like you have a wonderful relationship with your brother, yep, and I'm glad that you value and honor it. A sibling's death goes on reverberating through time with the same intensity that it reverberates through the lives of parents but in very unique and different ways.<3
 
Death feels so close right now. Your Dad is suffering. We are in limbo--is he dying? Is he just going through another bad patch of symptoms and then he will get into the drug trial and actually get a few good years? Either way, we both feel it. Death makes us think of you. He says without your brother he would just give up. Always our two boys--one in this world, one gone from it. Each of you two pulling our hearts in different directions.

Today I took your Dad to the doctor and then took him home and started out to the store to get him some crushed ice which is about all he can eat/drink sometimes. Down the street I heard a screaming argument coming from a woman inside the car and a guy outside walking away and then coming back. He finally walked about 1/2 block and then he stopped and just froze in place, stooped like an old man, shoulders so rounded and head hanging so low that I thought he was overcome with crying. As I passed him I wanted so badly to stop, to put a hand on his shoulder. He was so young but he looked so beaten up by life. I went to the store and I got two protein shakes, a sandwich and a gift card. When I came back he was by the car in that same defeated posture. They were both so miserable and all I could think is, there is so much suffering in this world. So many private hells. They were pretty thrilled with the gift card and the shakes. Made me think of you all around--how close you were coming to those kids' life but also how kind you always were--how you would have done something similar had you still been around and seen them. Maybe that's why that boy affected me so much. I kept thinking how he was once somebody's happy little kid.

I miss you, buddy. Your Dad does,too. We say your name out loud a lot. I usually say Cakey or Caleb but Dad always says, "Smokey". What will I do when your Dad is gone? No one else on this earth knows how much I miss you, how sad and crazy and happy and better you made me. He knows because he feels the same. Grief is lonely enough but I can't imagine losing the one person that I only have to say your name to and he understands the inexpressible vast universe of emotion held in that name. He better get in that damn trial.
 
Today you would have turned twenty four. Yesterday a friend's daughter stopped by to do some art with me. You went to kindergarten/first grade with her, though she was a year younger so the next time you two hung out was probably high school. She wanted to talk about the strange and terrifying and exhilarating time after university--when all the hard work and deadlines and reading and presentations are finally behind you, when adulthood is an immutable fact and you feel such enormous pressure and freedom all at the same time. I kept having to get up and go blow my nose, thankful for the cold I have that gave me a good excuse to do so. Finally I just admitted to her how much it hurt to see your contemporaries facing the new challenges that you will never face. We cried together a bit and let the art making take us back into easy conversation. She wanted to hear stories about you and she wanted to tell some of her own. It never fails that when I start to talk about you I end up laughing right through the tears. I have known, taught and loved so many children in my life. Even if you were not my son, you would have have captured my fascination and my heart with all that crazy intensity wrapped up with all that unbelievable softness and insight. You still remain one of the most amazing people I have ever known. To have our conversations cut short, your explorations and evolution here as my son and friend and teacher truncated so suddenly and irrevocably, is a loss so huge that it seems no matter how hard I try to expand myself to be able to encompass it, it remains impossible.

On the night after you died I did so many strange and manic things, even briefly making the plan to just follow you. But eventually I ended up back in front of our house, completely wrung out and emptied, a dry shell of a woman sitting in a car watching the streetlights go off one by one. I thought that I had gone with you after all, that your death was the death of everything, not the least of which was my love for the world. But you were not finished giving me gifts, dear Caleb. Almost overnight I saw that I had never loved the world enough, that I had never fought hard enough through my own misperceptions to a deeper, more truthful, more difficult love. I would trade that lesson back for you in a heartbeat, but since that is only wishful thinking, I will be grateful for it.

When you boys were little you loved to give gifts as much as you liked to get them. You loved the secrecy and surprise element. You loved the wrapping--and what an art we made out of that! Potato prints and old blueprints, tissue paper and haystacks of ribbon. Every gift you have ever given me came in layers and layers of wrapping; the goal of this wrapping was never to make a beautiful package, it was to disguise the size and shape and true contents of the gift within. This one, too. It's almost as if I can see it, a little slip of paper with your handwritten words:"love the world more, mom" wrapped in complicated lumpy layers of struggle and addiction, desperation and argument, but also carefully layered flower petals, bunny grass, sea air and honest laughter--all you had to give, you are still giving. I will light 24 candles for you today and make a fire. I will love all of it, not for what I wish it would be, but for what it is.

P1000057 by herbavore
 
Last edited:
Damn I nearly cried. I Think I have said this before but I never really understood a mothers love until you started posting here Herby. Its probably just projection on my part but it seems like you and Caleb have a similar relationship to me and my mom. We fight like dogs sometimes about my addiction. I rip her heart out with my words but at the end of the day we have a bond that is indestructible.
The love you have for him truly does pour off the screen it's a beautiful thing. I dunno what exactly I'm trying to say other than you deciding to become an active member of this site has made a positive impact on my life and I'm positive I'm not the only one.
 


Remembering those days after Tyler was in school and it was just you and me going through our days with your crazy adorable monologues on life, wearing Bun-Bun like a giant mitten wherever we went. So much going on in that mind of yours.....the innocence of those years when you let it all pour forth, before you turned so much of it on yourself. I can look at this and still smell the chlorine in your hair from swim lessons, still remember helping to guide your arms into the sleeves of that tee shirt, how thin the cotton was but how you loved it anyway, because Tyler had made it and worn it before you. This little version of you would have been lost to history whether you lived to old age or not; but a mother sees an adult child always through the complicated lens of the multiple pasts. Maybe that is one of the most important things that we do is to hold the knowledge of your nature intact despite all the divisions of the self that occur as you grow.
 
It saddens me whenever I have this thread pop up in my inbox. I've never known him well enough to pretend I'd care about his death myself, but I have the greatest respect for you and how you manage to fight through this and somehow end up carrying on. All my love goes out to you. I may not have known your son, but I won't ever forget about your loss. Just thinking about your situation floods my eyes with tears.

<3
 
It saddens me whenever I have this thread pop up in my inbox. I've never known him well enough to pretend I'd care about his death myself, but I have the greatest respect for you and how you manage to fight through this and somehow end up carrying on. All my love goes out to you. I may not have known your son, but I won't ever forget about your loss. Just thinking about your situation floods my eyes with tears.

<3

+1

feeling guilty about "celebrating" 25 years as an earthling. I honestly don't have the desire to live anymore but i promised so many people i would keep going until my time comes. I got stabbed on 4/20 and i can't understand why I'm still here. I hate living with a passion but it's the passion of others that keeps me living. I often wish I could end all pain and suffering in the world. I have so much respect for herbavore she has personally touched me in a way that nobody else in the world has. I just want to give her the biggest hug one day if i ever get a chance to visit California.
 
Something Still

Something still remains
beyond the baby shoes boxed in the attic,
beyond the ashes weighed down by their own silence in another box,
beyond your name on someone’s car in traffic with the words,
“never forget”,


Beyond these: something
still.
Not frozen but paused
The way a wind may die
but leave a slight hum
still quivering at the edges
of a vast new silence.

Something still, impermanent
but lasting long enough to illumine
faint beliefs
like tiny stars
behind thin clouds.

or as dew leaves the earth each morning
hovering just above
every leaf and field
a shimmer, a fleeting animation,
excitement,
death a process,
an action,
a crude suspension bridge still shivering
long after the last hiker has disappeared across the river.

language: the difference between an ending and the ending

something still of you
here
unseen,
only felt in stillness

time nothing more than Matisse’s circle of blue dancers
joining hands:
you once were,
always have been
still are, always
will be

something still, quieted in me,
and in that stillness, the wisdom
of verb tenses, of articles, of words with more than one meaning

how they lead me looping
further and further into a deep woods
parting branches and stepping over fallen logs
into this pale delicate shaft of
awareness.
Nothing I can hold onto,
bring with me,
nothing to even touch.
But still something.



Four years. The flags are shredding to nothing. In the beginning they were loud when the wind came up--they snapped and crackled and kicked. Now the wind combs through them without a sound. In some ways the silence you left just grows with each passing year. It doesn't get easier but it changes. I remember that first week, how we would struggle so hard with all the questions--the why's, the what ifs. And then we would simply crumple under the emptiness of those questions and we would just howl, "I miss him!" And that is still true on my way to work, and it still true when I come home. It is true when I am surrounded by people and when I am alone. I miss you more and more because there have been more and more days and nights to miss you in; newer and unimagined ways that your absence is as palpable as my own heartbeat. It is a loneliness like no other. Sometimes I convince myself that if I could only part these veils of grief, you would be there.
 

It's never a surprise to me that rabbit makes an appearance in this place. Summer solstice, beautiful land at Earthrise, Women's Visionary Congress, 2015. It was just the rabbit and I at about 6am up on a hill. I had just walked the labyrinth and was watching a doe with her two skittish fawns disappear over a rise nearby. Rabbit and I looked at each other for a long time. I told him about you in a whisper, thanked him for his presence, cried, felt like it was a prayer. A woman at the conference told about an experience in which she was led to ask if she had in some cosmic sense chosen her birth mother and therefore her adoption. I have often been offered this belief from others--that we choose our families, sometimes even different roles in our families in different lifetimes, and I admit that it is intriguing. If you did choose me, I hope that you learned as much from that relationship as I am still learning. The only thing I ever wanted you to learn was that you are lovable. I hope you carry that knowledge in whatever incarnation you exist in now.<3
 
Dear Herbavore,
i just put the pieces together on how you came to be on bluelight. When I first read some of your posts, I thought you must be someone with years of recovery, and possibly a counsellor of some kind. It was only a couple of days ago that I found out your story
i then read every post on this thread. I will truly never be the same person. Someone here said that you are the gift that your son left for bluelight. I could not agree more with that. I wonder how many lives you have touched. Hundreds? Thousands? Maybe even through your compassion and generosity of time that you give here, you are also touching people that do not even know that bluelight exists. My 15 year old daughter has been affected by you and hopefully she will never need to know about this site.

i have cried all the tears I can for one day, reading your posts. It is amazing to me that you give so much of yourself and your wisdom, even knowing what your grief is. My parents both died very recently, and prior to that, my brother died of an overdose. My wonderful and amazing mother could never have done what you are doing. I wish so much I could have read her your posts.

Thank you so much for what you do, your older son is so lucky that you are his mom. Your whole family sounds great, but if you never make another post again, it is you that I wiil never forget.

Peace
 

It's never a surprise to me that rabbit makes an appearance in this place. Summer solstice, beautiful land at Earthrise, Women's Visionary Congress, 2015. It was just the rabbit and I at about 6am up on a hill. I had just walked the labyrinth and was watching a doe with her two skittish fawns disappear over a rise nearby. Rabbit and I looked at each other for a long time. I told him about you in a whisper, thanked him for his presence, cried, felt like it was a prayer. A woman at the conference told about an experience in which she was led to ask if she had in some cosmic sense chosen her birth mother and therefore her adoption. I have often been offered this belief from others--that we choose our families, sometimes even different roles in our families in different lifetimes, and I admit that it is intriguing. If you did choose me, I hope that you learned as much from that relationship as I am still learning. The only thing I ever wanted you to learn was that you are lovable. I hope you carry that knowledge in whatever incarnation you exist in now.<3
Great stuff, who was Ektamine to you?

Anyone have information on EK? What was he abusing, or what took him out?:(
 
Ektamine was, and still is, my son. He died (after a terrifying year of pretty hard abuse of MDPV )of a morphine overdose suspected to have been from poppy tea.
 
So sad, so sad, so sad. It is summer and hot. Green, the world is green. Boys with surfboards fling themselves into blue water and come up paddling strong. Water sparkles and the sun starts to slant away from us. I am out here in the wind and sun, spinning, spinning, alive. But , like a cloud suddenly covering the sun I am seeing people in dark rooms, afraid to be there, afraid to leave. This day means nothing to them, nor does the season, the thinning light, the life humming like bees in every tree I pass. I don't know why they came to me right now. Maybe so I would think of you, a boy with a foot in both those worlds. So, OK. I'll go there. Me outside walking towards you in your apartment. Climbing the stairs. So many beautiful days collapsing into that little cupboard of darkness. Trying to coax you outside. Seeing that you had covered the windows. One world right outside the other.
 
The stories are so vivid in my head. This picture is ever present. Poppy tea made my son comfortable and also slowly killed him. The stimulants and psychedelics and external pressure caused scar after anxious scar that was self medicated with downers. I never wanted this for him. He was in so much pain and it was so apparent to me but it wasn't enough to help him. I was so powerless and weak. I thought he would persevere. The doctors did the best they could for him but he burned out in a quiet wilt. And I with him. He lost his breath. breathless for so long and then
 
I know exactly what you are talking about. We never wanted this for our sons. I do believe that you were powerless but you were not weak. Or maybe you were weak, but being strong would have made no difference. I remind myself every day of the fact that no one really has power over me, so why would I expect to have power over someone else? Influencer, guide, compass. That's what I wanted to be as a mother. Sometimes I succeeded fantastically and sometimes I failed miserably. It's so easy now to see only the failures and to give them power.
 
Top