RIP Brian Demorest

They say that the punch that gets you is the one you never saw coming.
Being on the road has its charms but the downside is that you lose track of people and things. I just heard that my friend Brian died this week, a likely suicide.
Without going into the debate about suicide from a moral standpoint, I want to say that to me, suicide is at once both the bravest and most cowardly act that a person can do. It is also the most selfish one.
Brian Demorest and I were friends from long ago. We first played ball together when he was a teenager, and later, when he was making a name for himself training boxers at Camptown in Kerhonkson, New York, I occasionally would come by and help out a bit, having the boxing bug myself, and later I did a really nice piece for the Blue Stone Press. Brian would always take time to introduce me to the name fighters who were in town at the time and I got to meet people like Hasim Rahman, Lucia Rijker, James Toney, Iran Barkley, Carl “the Truth” Williams and many more. It was a thrill to see a humble kid from my hometown in a corner on HBO! This guy knew his stuff and cared about the sport and the good people in it. Privately he would tell me which ones were not the nicest citizens (there were a lot, since boxing has often been compared to an open cesspool) but he always maintained that the sport would rise above the scumbags who constantly held it down while picking its deep pockets.
Later, after the bright lights glare had toned down a bit, and the HBO gigs became ESPN gigs and then local boxing shows, Brian started to go through anxiety attacks, out of nowhere, and he sought appropriate medical help. He was put on Xanax to calm him down and soon was taking too much of that stuff. A failed marriage turned bitter and a custody dispute over his dearly loved son took the damage to newer levels and he began to fall apart. I had not spoken to him for several years, since bringing a few troubled kids by his gym for boxing lessons about 10 years ago ( I was teaching at risk kids for a few years and Brian told me to bring them by and he would try to help out a bit by getting them involved with the great self discipline that boxing gives).
Then the advent of Facebook, and we reconnected. It was a different Brian I saw. He was very much into photography, his faith in God and in trying to get some measure of custody of his boy. He reached out to me to write some letters on his behalf to various people in the system, which I did, but several incidents with his ex and too many Xanax really hurt his case beyond anything letters from me could fix.
He began to call me in recent months. He would be out of it on the Xanax, slurring his words a bit, (but still training fighters---he’d be calling out instructions to them while we talked on the phone—and he wasn’t slurring his words then.) The last time we talked he told me he was about to lose his gym because he couldn’t keep up with the rent. That was a few months back, and I never spoke to him again.
So it all got to be too much, and this week, apparently, he acted on it.
Damn you, Brian. You’ve left a lot of people very very upset. Some of us tried to help you, and now feel guilty for letting you down. I know if you could you would reach out to tell us its okay, but for now we are left feeling like we didn’t do enough for you. You also probably don’t think about this but you left your beloved son, who you fought so hard to be with, thinking the worst about his dad. That was the most selfish aspect of what you did. You always taught your fighters to get up after taking a hard shot. Why couldn’t you follow your own advice???
The beautiful photographs you took reveal much about your inner soul. Your inspirational words daily on Facebook got a lot of support and response. Did you mean them?
We will never know what went through your mind in those last moments alive but I truly hope that there was a measure of peace just before the end came. Now it remains for your friends and family to sort out all details of your life and try to make sense of it all. Rest in peace, old friend. Rest in peace.