Sincerely, Tyler ▸ (Sequel to Dear, Rosemary)

End

Josh's P.O.V

"Josh how do you feel about Tyler's death?" "Why do you think he killed himself?" "Would you say he was unhappy this whole time?" "What were his last words to you?"

These people around me, snapping photos and yelling at me, they were disgusting, absolutely revolting. I couldn't even spend the day of my best friends funeral properly due to the fact that they had no respect whatsoever for anyone's feelings.

Ryan wasn't too focused on them as they were, luckily, unable to enter the actual cemetery. Instead her head was buried into the grass where Tyler's casket laid, right beside Rosemary's body, pulling at it harshly as she cried out so painfully, so hurt. Those gathered around us to morn Tyler's loss were taken aback by Ryan's obvious distraught state, and it showed, as although they too were hurt by this situation, they knew they weren't as hurt as her.

Ryan was never emotional, but these few months have been so absolutely awful to her. She stopped eating regularly, stopped sleeping, would cry too often. Her best friends were gone, and she was no longer able to contain herself.

And although it hurt, it wasn't that sight that really moved me, though. The minute Tyler's mother heard what had happened she could barely breathe. Now, standing here with the priest waiting to begin the ceremony, watching her try and contain herself as her eldest son was lifeless before her, it was awful. Heart wrenching.

At the viewing, she would not let his hands go, regardless the fact that they were freezing. She spoke to him, whispered inaudible nothings to Tyler through her sobs that anyone would sympathize with.

How I felt through this? Well, when you stay up all night with your girlfriend, wondering why your best friend has not yet returned from an activity that should only have taken him about two hours, it was nerve wracking. You wondered where he went, if he had confused himself on his way back or if his phone just died and he lost track of time.

Your mind would come up with assumptions, which was deadly. Because, at the back of your brain, if you were to dig deep enough, the awful thought of your best friend killing themselves had dug its way in there. And I did think about it, and I would assume. However, I just prayed to every god I could think of, hoping that it would not be the case.

But hope was a funny thing. Hope makes people want certain results, and hope would make someone go insane if that result would never come to them. Which indeed sounds like a situation similar to mine.

When you are led by the police into your old home, and the sight of an undeserving human, hanging from a noose, rocking slowly...back and forth, all hope leaves you. Every last fucking drop of it diminishes itself from your mind.

Hearing the creaking of that rope, just thinking about the thought of Tyler stepping off that tree branch to his death, it made me sick. It made an awful feeling enter me and never go away.

The minute I saw him there in that state, I rushed over to him, his body pale and already icy. It wasn't true in my head, though, because I had held him up so that he was not choking any longer until the officers cut the rope. That's where he laid in my arms, and I had gone berserk. I screamed out, damning everything to hell as those taunting marks on his neck met my eyes.

Tyler didn't deserve that. Tyler was better than that. What hurt was that he didn't think the same.

What hurt was placing his journal in his casket. What hurt was crying into his shoulder and yelling for it to not be real.