My dad called. That’s how I knew the news was bad. In the hotel room where they found you, there were all kinds of drugs. In your system: ecstasy, cocaine, fentanyl. You had told your wife that you were going to work, your boss you were home sick.

At your second one-year cake, you lamented the suffering you had put everyone through, but boy, had you not even started yet. During your engagement you asked me if I had any friends who you could have some fun with. P told me later that you had tried to fuck a blood relative, another addict.

At your wedding, your friend reminisced about breaking into your parents’ liquor cabinet together at age 13. I balked at the appropriateness of the comment, but our aunt hushed me, said this is exactly the kind of speech a best man gives.

At your funeral, there were hundreds of people. A friend joked about your preference for hot flag girls over male flaggers, which everyone found funny. Your aunt complained that the service wasn’t Indigenous enough, which caused a rift with her sisters.

Afterward, Shawna got a tattoo of you on utility poles, and within a year B had a new daddy and three stepsiblings.