Time in a Bottle

I mentioned before that Alan was my movie buddy. The last two movies we saw were X-Men: Days of Future Past and Guardians of the Galaxy. I guess this makes sense; we both loved Marvel Comics growing up. In fact, I recently found a drawing he made me when I moved away for medical school that included the things we shared, which apparently were: Marvel Comics, music, Great America. I guess this is what was important to 10 year old Alan.

For Alan, it was usually Spider-Man. I guess that makes sense. He was a loner who was misunderstood and under-appreciated, driven by a deep need to be good. He was haunted by the consequences of failing to do so. He was pensive, and had a constant inner dialog.

For me, it was the X-Men. Also misunderstood and under-appreciated, they banded together to make the world a better place.



Neither of us had read the relatively obscure comics that led to the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but we both looked forward to it. Here's the trailer -- the most iconic part at 1:51, if you want to skip ahead.



As you can see, the soundtrack was big on oldies.

Anyway, I guess we both outgrew comic books, but this was still something we shared. It's funny, the more I think about it, Alan was always the person I wanted to spend the most time with. He wasn't sociable or pleasant all the time, and he clearly didn't always want to be around me. We each had our own lives with our own friends as well. As much as I know he cared about me, it's clear I always cared more about him. Ours was a difficult relationship to describe. We were clearly brothers, but we were truly friends as well. He saw me as another parental figure, but not exactly as a parent. He was able to tell me things he wouldn't tell Mom or Dad. He would come to me for help when he didn't want to go to someone else.

Part of this was because he seemed to want to compartmentalize his problems -- to split them up into ones he could tell me, tell them, tell his friends. Each of us got a different little part of the picture. Maybe he did it to prevent any of us from seeing to whole thing, his pain in its entirety. Maybe he was afraid of what we would do to try to help him. Regardless the reason, it's made for a complicated task now that he is gone to figure out exactly who he was. I was poised in a position to see more of the picture than most, but of course, my view, and this blog as its outgrowth, is so limited -- such a small fragment of Alan.