The phone rings at 8 AM. Jerry's voice is unusually quiet. "I have news. Has anyone told you? Adam killed himself. Day before yesterday."

"How did he do it?"

"Hung himself in his mother's garage." Long silence. "The funeral's Thursday. I'm driving up tonight. Get a pen and I'll give you the location. Guess I'll see you there."

"I'm not sure I should go."

"Go. You need closure."

"The only closure I need is knowing that I'll never see him again. Got plenty of closure when we broke up. Besides, his family hates me."

"Why? Because you wouldn't marry a manic-depressive alcoholic who couldn't hold a job?"

"Because he was happy with me, and when I left, it crushed him. He never moved out of his mother's house. He had eight years to tell her how I wrecked his life."

"Oh, for...Go. Go to the funeral. You need to put this to rest. Literally." Jerry's sarcastic edge is back. "I'll get between you and the angry villagers. They hate me way more than they hate you. Should be quite a show."

Adam and I dated for two years, when I was in college. Like many twentysomethings in the early 1990s, he was unemployed and living with his mother, with no money to attend school. I knew many such people back then: falling on hard times is not necessarily a statement of one's character. I worked, studied, and plotted my future. Adam plotted our future. He wanted to marry me. I loved him, and incorrectly assumed that he was facing temporary setbacks, not refusing to enter a world that was beyond his control.

As I neared graduation, he saw that I could survive without him, and began a campaign to convince me otherwise. He followed me by phone. Calls at 4 AM the nights before important exams; calls to me at work every hour until my boss threatened to fire me; calls to my boss, telling her I had "issues"; notes placed on my car at strange hours; endless accusations of infidelity - all just below my state's threshold for legal action.

Then there were the suicide attempts. In his teens, Adam had made a genuine attempt to kill himself. When the local TV news came calling to do an article on teenage suicide, Adam discovered the ultimate manipulation tool. Death gets you attention. Impending death gets you even more. He threatened suicide about once a year, making a semi-realistic attempt that would once again thrust him into the spotlight. Once again, everyone flocked to him. Once again, their lives were in his control.

Yes, he was sick. Yes, he was caught in the medically uninsured Catch-22; too old for his mother's insurance, too uneducated to find a decent job, too poor to go to school and qualify for Mom's Blue Cross as a student. I understood all this. But I also understood that he had no desire to get well. Managing bipolar disorder requires humility, adherence to a treatment plan, and a desire to join the world of the sane. Adam wanted none of this. Being off his meds meant his drinking could escalate, causing more people to worry about him. Being sick sanctioned his unemployment. Being unemployed gave him more time to spend on the phone, spreading vicious rumors about his perceived "enemies" - people who no longer spoke to him, or who he felt had ignored him for too long. His illness was his personal kingdom. Recovery was for losers. Being sick was too much fun.

I moved on - dated other men, changed my phone number, moved, changed my number again, moved again, warned mutual friends not to tell him where I'd gone, married someone else, told the same friends that NO, they were NOT to tell Adam my new last name, that he did NOT want to "call to congratulate me," and dropped off everyone's radar. This, for eight years.

And now he was really gone.

There are deaths one expects - elderly relatives; those with terminal cancer. There are deaths one does not expect, like my friend Peter, dead at 36 from a heart attack. Adam's death fell somewhere in between. Frankly, I had expected to get this call a lot sooner.

"I think you should go," says my normally uncommunicative boss when I mention that an old boyfriend died recently. "When someone dies, if you knew them well, you should pay your respects."

On Thursday, I pull something black out of my closet and drive to the funeral home. I pass the park near Adam's house, remembering times we spent there. Walking into the parlor, I start looking for escape routes, while simultaneously wondering if Adam's family will even recognize me. Maybe I do need closure.

"Nice suit." Jerry's voice catches me by surprise. "You should have worn wench garb. He would've loved it."

"I'm a grownup now."

"We all are." Eric, Adam's high school friend, appears out of nowhere. "Sorry I'm late."

"Eric! So good to see you ! All of you, thank you for coming!" Adam's mother floats around the corner with a strange dazed grin on her face. "He'd want you here, I know he would. We've got Enya playing..." She looks at Jerry. "You're Scott, aren't you? His friend from..."

"I'm Jerry. I'm the one you told Adam not to talk to anymore. Thanks for letting me know, by the way."

"Oh, yes...Suzanne! Good of you to make it!" She floats away.

Jerry looks at Eric. "What the...She threw me out of her house once and doesn't remember?"

Eric laughs. "Happy pills. Whatever her doctor gave her, she must have doubled it. I'm surprised she knows who died. Tomorrow she'll remember that you were a Bad Influence On Her Son."

I spot Mitch, Adam's brother in law. It has been eight years, but he recognizes me. We weren't close, but I say hello. "How was he these past few years?"

"Up and down. He'd get better, he'd work for a while, then he'd go off his pills or do something stupid. But it looked like he was improving for real. He just got approved for sliding-scale therapy. He was supposed to start next week. Could have really helped him."

The service begins, and we take our seats. Jerry's huge hand wraps around mine, and his brown eyes darken to black as the eulogies begin. Adam - beloved son, uncle, nephew. The first dyslexic student added to his school's Dean's List. A young person who saw the world as worth saving. Adam never littered. He volunteered for neighborhood trash pickups. Because of Adam, the local park is in pristine condition. He saved a life once on the freeway. Because of Adam, that truck driver's children still have a father.

I silently compose my own eulogy. Because of Adam, I turn off my phone at night. Because of Adam, I know the Twelve Signs of a Potential Abuser and all the loopholes in our stalking laws. I have been permanently soured on Tolkien, Enya, and an otherwise beautiful park. Because of Adam, I avoided mutual friends, stopped posting to my favorite Web sites, and didn't announce my marriage in print because he might use my new last name to find me. Because of Adam, my world shrank when it should have been expanding. I lost far more than two years to this nightmare. I cannot grieve for him, not anymore.

Jerry's hand wraps mine tighter. I could say all this to him and he wouldn't judge me for it. Jerry can look at my worst self and still love me. Nothing in me could ever scare, disillusion, or horrify him, and that's a rare find. He kept in touch with Adam through the bad years, perhaps because Adam offered him the same unconditional friendship. As the eulogies continue, the black eyes fill with tears. I finally understand what he has lost.

The service ends. I cannot get out fast enough. I am racing to the parking lot when Adam's mother stops me. She thanks me again for coming. She invites me to her house after the service. "It's mostly family, but you're welcome. You were almost family, after all. I can forgive you for everything. I mean, the way the world is now, with the Trade Center and all...Anyway, you can't change anything now. When he was with you, he was happy."

I want to scream at her, "Forgive me? For WHAT? For loving your son? For seeing his potential? For refusing to coddle his addictions? For not marrying someone who wanted to destroy my chances of success? For crossing that bridge to adulthood that Adam wouldn't put the first toe on? What, exactly, do I need forgiveness for?"

Instead, I tell her I'm not really family, smile, and make a break for my car.

I feel Jerry's hands behind me, on my shoulders. "Breathe in," he says.

"What?"

"Breathe. Take a deep breath and let it out."

As I exhale, he squeezes my arms tightly. "Feel it? That, my dear, was your sigh of relief."