Everyones Friend, My Friend
James Coleman Howes: 1989-2025
It’s Tuesday May 14th, 4:08 PM. My wife and I arrive at the visitation 8 minutes late, due to one of Midwest’s patented screaming rainstorms briefly hammering us on I-75, slowing traffic to a crawl. Flat ground out here, silos and soybeans, nothing to slow the thunderheads. That and a bathroom break at McDonalds on the outskirts of Bowling Green, Ohio. We have driven 4 hours, left the kids with my in-laws, then driven two more. My back aches. We circle the parking lot but it’s full and we have to park a couple blocks away and walk in the drizzling remnants of the storm. “I guess Coleman was as popular as we thought” I say to my wife. “Of course”, she says “of course”. We had passed a college bar called “Shots Incorporated” on the way into town and I’d thought about how that probably made Coleman laugh. We note the punks and hardcore guys walking in, the tattoos and pocket tees, and I figure it’s safe to untuck my shirt.
It’s summer of 2020. Coleman and I are sitting in my driveway in Ypsilanti. I’m drinking Killer Lites and he’s on his fourth or fifth Lacroix, which he brought in a Guy Fieri “Flavor Town” cooler. He has recently quit drinking. He has been driving the hour north pretty regularly to hang in the backyard or the driveway with Alex and I (and our toddler son Pete), both of us being extroverts and needing some friend time pretty desperately. We talk politics, we talk music, we make inside jokes about Homestar Runner and Taco Bell. Alex has gone to bed and we keep talking until the middle of the night. Our pent up sociability spilling out. I have been having a hard time staying home and desperately need someone to hang out with. Coleman is one of the few people willing to be there. One of the things I love about him. So on this night, like many over the course of the pandemic, we sit and talk, swat mosquitos, listen to our favorite bands, bitch about the state of the world, laugh about the mundane. On a walk around the block he stops to take a picture of “Twin Towers” street, never one to miss a chance at a “Bush did 9/11” joke.
It’s May 14th 4:12 PM. We enter the funeral home and join a long, snaking line waiting to say a few words to my aunt and uncle. My brother and my cousins Chris and Carolyn see us from across the room and come over for hugs. We chat for a bit and I glance behind us. The line is growing.
It’s fall of 2021. We are having a “Covid is Over” barbecue. All my best friends come, my brother Andy, Josh, Marty etc. Mike from the running store. Phil from DSA. A small but rowdy bunch. Coleman shows up and brings his Flavor Town cooler. This time it has Lacroix but also veggie burgers. He’s recently gone vegan, which I always forget. No problem, he’s come prepared. Another thing I love about Coleman is that he always gives everyone the benefit of the doubt, “extends grace” as it were. When I forget to buy veggie burgers he doesn’t assume I’m an asshole, and when I remember to buy them he’s appreciative. He’s a hardcore lefty, like me, but doesn’t police language, doesn’t take offense easily if at all. He loves people, as well as “the people”. He assumes, correctly, that most people are good, most of the time. That if you give people a chance, they mostly do the right thing. We grill and eat the food, play some hillbilly horseshoes. Coleman helps me put the dishes away as Alex puts Pete to sleep. We build a fire. I crack another beer, he cracks another Lacroix. We sit around the fire. Coleman is talking to my brother Andy about playing in bands. Coleman is talking to Josh about the pros and cons of Chicago vs Detroit. Coleman is talking to me and Phil about the UAW.
It’s May 14th, 5 PM. We’ve barely moved, and now the line is reaching outside and across the parking lot. Hardcore kids and artists and Buddhists and old family friends and cousins and old elementary catholic school friends from way back and old teachers and parents of old buddies and cousins and aunts and uncles have driven from across the Midwest; from Chicago and Toledo from Columbus and Detroit from Cleveland and Cincinnati and Indianapolis and Monroe and Kalamazoo and Bloomington and Dayton. There must be five hundred people here. Most of them are waiting in the rain.
It’s summer 2018. Alex is seven months pregnant with out first. Coleman comes up to Ypsilanti for the weekend. I’m in the middle of replacing our floor and he finds me on the porch with a circular saw. We clean up the tools and scrap vinyl and go out to eat with Alex at a place with impossible burgers. Then we say goodbye to my pregnant wife, head out to the bars. Coleman hasn’t quit drinking yet. We go first to the Tap Room and then walk the railroad tracks to the Regal Beagle. Coleman calls walking the tracks a “quintessential rust belt experience”. He crashes in our guest room and the next morning we go out to breakfast at American Grill, my favorite diner, a place I will get to know much better when my son is born, when we become the most regular of regulars and the waitresses befriend us and our kids and our friends and their kids. In 2023, when we move up north Coleman will paint it for us.
Now it’s fall of 2019. Coleman and I are driving to a different diner, this one in Battle Creek, stopping only at Boggs gas station for Monster Energy Drinks on our way out of Ypsilanti. Coleman had expressed an interest in exploring there, and, being that I had just started organizing there I thought that would be fun. “Battle Creek calls to me” he had texted me. So, hungover and listening to my favorite bands, I drive an hour and a half to my favorite dingy little spot in Battle Creek, the Corner Cafe. Some greasy breakfasts sooth our stomachs. Coleman proclaims it his “favorite diner of all time”. I’m suspicious of this designation because he is nothing if not overly enthusiastic, a constant, and I guess he probably has ten “favorite diners of all time” but it still makes me smile. We wander and drive the streets of Battle Creek for the day. The Kellogg’s factory, judging by the smell downwind, is making Cocoa Puffs today. Another thing I loved about Coleman is his passion for the Midwest, the rust belt, the strange and interesting things you can find off the beaten path in places like Battle Creek and Jackson, where we stop on our way back for dinner. You ever see a cool abandoned building and want to text a picture of it to someone? It happens to me all the time. Coleman is my go to guy for that. Mid afternoon we stop in to a dive bar I know in BC. There are some Kellogg plant worker guys in there and we talk with them about the Tigers who are on the TV. That’s another thing I love about Coleman. He likes to go into little hole in the wall places and talk with people, just like me. He laughs hard to hear the Tigers second baseman’s name. Niko Goodrum. “Funniest name ever”.
It’s Wednesday May 7th. 2025. 8:30 PM. I come downstairs and call my Dad, who has left me a message while I was putting my six year old to bed. He tells me he has bad news. Am I sitting down? I am. Is Alex with me? She is. Coleman has taken his own life.
It’s Memorial Day weekend 2024. Coleman has come up to visit us in our new place, first time up here. He’s, as always, rabidly enthusiastic. “Dude this is perrrrfect!” When he arrives Saturday we are hanging at my neighbors house watching the kids play in the yard. He joins us, hits it off with the neighbors, later tells me how lucky we are to have cool neighbors to be friends with. I know man, I know. That evening we go down to the lake to watch the sunset and drink a Miller Lite/Lacroix. There’s a big burly guy with barbed wire tattoos and wearing a “wife respecter” teaching his kid how to fish. We chat with him. Turns out he’s an oncologist at the hospital! Can’t judge a book. On Sunday I have to go cook at the Lions club breakfast at the township hall at 7 am. Coleman sleeps in and helps Alex bring the kids over for pancakes later in the morning, then we take the kids across the street to the park to play for a while, the neighbors are there too. Lucky coincidence.
In the afternoon I have an unpleasant surprise for him. We have to go help my folks and brother put in a dock. Heavy, frustrating work. No worries, he’s all in, excited to see my folks and Andy. Before he leaves Monday afternoon he is sure to tell me how Alex and I are “really living life the right way, and it’s inspiring”. Coleman is the ultimate hype man, probably his most admirable trait among many. If you do something he thinks is cool, he’ll tell you. If he thinks something you made, or wrote, or accomplished, was impressive, he will tell you. In his trademark overly enthusiastic but completely sincere way. It takes courage to give people that type of compliment. Courage and love. We should all try a little harder to do it a little more often.
It’s May 14th, 6PM. We’ve still barely moved. Officially, the visitation is supposed to be ending, but no one’s going anywhere. My mom comes over and says Andy and Alex and I should get out of line since we’ll have a chance to talk with my aunt and uncle later. We go to the “lounge” get a ginger ale then go outside to the covered porch. It’s pouring again. Coleman’s ex, who was still one of his best friends, chats with us. His bandmates from one or two of his four bands are hanging out near us, planning what bar to go to. I tell my brother and wife I’d rather go with them than out to dinner with my extended family. Alex rolls her eyes but Andy agrees. Can’t do it though. Gotta be a good son, brother, cousin, nephew.
It’s fall of 2021. I’m driving with an old college buddy to Toledo. Two of Coleman's bands are playing at a pretty cool bar, one he plays drums in and one he’s the lead singer/screamer in. I’ve never seen them and I’ve been feeling guilty about it, it’s about damn time. Covid is still fresh in people’s minds but it feels great to be in a crowded sweaty bar. Coleman knows everyone. This is his scene, the Toledo hardcore scene. Or at least one of his scenes. There’s probably 25 people in here who consider him their best friend, but he still comes and has a (non-alcoholic) drink with me and Evan. He makes time for everybody, somehow. When Hatefiles goes on he thrashes and crashes around, hoots an hollers. He jokes with the crowd. The awkward goth kids start what could generously be called a mosh pit. Evan and I stay in the back. Not our type of music, but on the other hand, you can’t say it doesn’t rock.
This is a different scene for me, and I’m happy to be here. As I move into a phase of my life that is very conventional, two kids, wife, mortgage, health insurance, I appreciate friends like Coleman more. People who are living an intentionally unconventional life, who run in unconventional circles, in Coleman’s case quite a lot of them. It’s good to keep a connection to those scenes, keep things interesting. Coleman is a good friend for that.
It’s spring of 2014. Coleman and I have started a texting friendship rooted in shared sense of humor and political sensibilities. He is living in Chicago, going to grad school at the same university my fiancé is at. In two or three months we will get married, then she will be ordained, then I’ll take a new job, then she’ll take a Pastor position at a church in Ann Arbor, then we’ll move to Ypsilanti, all in the span of a couple months. And then Coleman will come visit us and fall in love with Ypsilanti just like me. But that’s all in the future, I’m visiting her for the weekend and we have a whole day to kill. Coleman meets us for breakfast at an out of the way little diner (lots of diners) he knows. We’re planning to go to some museums and he says he’ll tag along. He points out cool buildings along the way and tells us about his Chicago neighborhood which, even living there a short time, he knows like the back of his hand. It’s our first time hanging out as adults, and we were never really close as kids despite being close in age. We were pretty different, I was basically a jock/sports kid and he was into BMX biking and playing drums and art. But it’s surprisingly chill, he’s an easy guy to hang with and his ruthless positivity naturally puts you in a good mood. I think we should hang out again.
I’m not the only guy who felt close to Coleman. In fact, it seems like there was probably hundreds of us. But that doesn’t make it less true. It’s easy and tempting to think that that could have been his downfall. He was everyone’s greatest hype man, including mine. Constantly encouraging, constantly making you feel like you were the coolest dude in the world. Maybe there was too much of that going out and not enough coming back his way. I don’t know, I tried to tell him how much I appreciated him but obviously, now, I wish I would have done more of that, everyone does. Maybe he was just too heartbroken about the pain and injustice in the world and his inability, all of our inability, to end it. Maybe he was searching, through all his dabbling in different scenes and communities and hobbies and interests for a more comfortable identity, for a more simple way to be in the world, and maybe he stopped believing he could find it. Or maybe there were just chemicals in his brain that made it not work right.
There are some questions, some mysteries, that we just have to admit that we’ll never be able to solve, because the only guy with the answers isn’t around anymore.
For a couple days after I heard about it, I wished I could somehow go back in time and talk him out of it. Look at all these people who love you! Look at all this beauty in the world! But that’s futile. That’s self centered on my part.
Now I just wish I had one more chance to talk with him. One more bonfire, one more dive bar (I remember his quote, after he got sober, when I asked him if he wanted to stop hanging out at bars: “hell no! Bars are just a vibe!” Diet coke it is). One more backyard barbecue or diner breakfast or walk around a half abandoned rust belt town. One more drive listening to Limp Bizkit and Gridiron. One more “love you cuz” as I climb out the passenger seat.
Back in Battle Creek, 2018. Coleman takes off his sweatshirt as it gets hot, and I notice some new ink. Unlike me, and pretty much everyone else, who stop getting tattoos at age 30, Coleman waited until age 30 and then started getting tattoos. And he got a lot of them. He finally got that Monster Energy tattoo he had been joking and posting on Facebook about for years. And another one that reads “Live, Laugh, Limp Bizkit”. Coleman likes what he likes, and is unabashed about it. He’s sort of intentionally downwardly mobile in a way I admire, and his cultural tastes reflect and drive that. There are people who, understandably, see his online presence and assume that he’s being purely ironic when he posts about Monster and Limp Bizkit. But if you hang out with him you find out pretty quick that he drinks Monster Energy (the white one is his go to) all the time and listens to Limp Bizkit even more. He just actually likes them (as do I. Just a couple of the many things he’s turned me on to). I remember a time we were all hanging out and someone casually used Nickleback as shorthand for shitty music (a very elderly millennial thing to do). And Coleman just as casually replied “nah man, Nickleback actually rules”. And then we put on “Rockstar”. And it did rule.
It’s May 14th. Just after 7PM. The visitation was supposed to end an hour ago. Andy, Alex, and I are sitting on the porch in silence. Rain is dumping off the roof in buckets. The hardcore punk band people have left to go to the bar, where later they’ll sing karaoke to all of Colemans favorites, as I’ll hear about tomorrow. But the line is still out the door. My cousin Danny finds us on the porch, tells us the family is going to the restaurant, are we ready? We are. We get up, walk back through the funeral home, gather jackets and recycle cans. We have to exit out the back door, past where my aunt and uncle have been greeting people for over three hours. My aunt has finally excused herself, justifiably pleading exhaustion. But my uncle is still there. He looks like he’s at the end of the worst week of his life, he’s been through the ringer. But, I assume, he feels some sort of duty to at least greet all these people who made a pilgrimage on his sons behalf. They are telling him stories about Coleman. They are crying. They are telling him they are so sorry. They are really saying: we loved him. We love you because we loved him.
We sneak behind him, behind my uncle. Tomorrow, he will stand at my aunts side as she delivers her sons eulogy, beautifully, through tears. As we all cry and cry, as the crust punks and hippies and guys that work in the Jeep factory and are also in hardcore bands, as the friends and family and long time parishioners and well-wishers and all of us cry. Packed into the biggest catholic parish in Bowling Green, Ohio, packed to the rafters, past capacity. As we file out and the nonbinary people and the hipsters wearing backward hats cross themselves. As my many, many, many, aunts hug each other and bustle around the vestibule making sure there’s enough food. As the priest gets someone to order a bunch of pizza.
I’m remembering 2017, Andy and Marty and Coleman and I are in Chicago at Thalia Hall seeing my favorite band, The Hold Steady. I have forced all three of these guys to become fans of this band, and now they are. Very much so. It’s the end of the show. Craig Finn, the lead singer, is gesticulating and screaming “we are all. We are ALL. WE. ARE. ALL. The Hold Steadyyyyyyyy……” Cymbals crash, guitars blast power chords. Confetti, tons of confetti, is thrown in the air by people in the front few rows, flutters around, lands on us. I’ll be finding it in my clothes for weeks. I have my right arm around Andy and my left arm around Coleman. We’re all drenched in sweat and the beer that people have been throwing in the air. Andy is grinning, Coleman is grinning, Marty is grinning. I’m grinning. We’re hugging, we may or may not be a little moist eyed. Later, walking back across a bridge in an industrial section of Chicago in the wee hours of the morning, after a stop at one more bar for a Malort nightcap, Coleman still can’t contain his enthusiasm. “God DAMMIT what a magical band! What a lot of love! What a magical night!” He kicks a bottle on the sidewalk. I’m thinking, where he is now, it’s like that. One long magical night. What a lot of love.
Back in 2025 we squeeze past my uncle. The line is still out the door. “Thank you”, he is saying, again and again. “Thank you. Thank you so much”.
Please pray for Coleman’s family and friends. If you would like, you can join me in donating to one of his favorite organizations, Hope for the Day, a suicide prevention organization associated with the alternative music scene in Chicago.
Luke, this is simply stunningly beautiful. Thank you for summing up Coleman’s persona so well. And O know he is in the midst of one long magical night with a lot of love.
What a beautiful, moving tribute to Coleman. I am so sorry for your loss and the community’s loss. I will pray for his eternal happiness and peace.