Matthew Mark Hawkins

Matthew’s memory lives on here!! Posting pictures from Matt’s memorial and my speech: I first met Matt at a party my brother and his high school friends threw at our house one weekend when my parents were out of town. We were 13. A year later we met again and became friends at Washington High School. In high school we developed a crew of friends that was tight and would remain connected into adulthood….all of that crew is here today! Matthew was born at NYU hospital in Manhattan on October 23rd, 1969. I was born just under a month later at the same hospital. Being New Yorkers, even if just on paper, was one of the things he and I bonded over. Matt was special, I felt it when I first met him. From a young age he was an evolved human who seemed wiser than his years. He had the kind of understated confidence and natural charisma that most guys wish they had. Matt was meticulous, if you’ve ever seen one of the joints he rolled you know I speak the truth. He was also determined, committed and studious. When he set his mind to something it didn’t just get done, it got done to the highest standard. He was someone you could always rely on to be there for you no matter what. He always had your back. Matt loved the law, it appealed to his intellectual curiosity and challenged his academic stamina. But he didn’t love the legal world, I think it put him at odds with his strong sense of integrity. A theme that ran throughout his life was the pursuit of justice. When we were 17, Matt, Justin and Hernan introduced me to El Toro Taqueria in the Mission…it was a turning point in my life! He and I shared a love of travel and, over the years, we had some big adventures together. It began the Summer between our junior and senior year at Washington high, 1986. Justin borrowed Hal’s car and he, Matt and I drove all night up to the Oregon border where the commune had some land in a remote location. We spent a few days there hiking, drinking, smoking and swimming in the sump. It was my first true taste of adult freedom, being away from home and my parents. Throughout our college years I would drive down from SF to Santa Cruz on weekends to hang out with Matt, Colin and Adam, who were studying there. In 1994, when I was living in France, Matt came for a visit. I introduced him to my French family and friends. We borrowed my cousin Laure’s car and traveled around France, following the pro surf tour down the Atlantic coast…we got into lots of good trouble. He was the best non-native French speaker I’ve ever met, he was truly gifted with languages. On my return from France, Matt and I shared a flat in the Inner Richmond district. We hosted many parties and spent many evenings indulging my love of beer and Matt’s love of philosophy! On a failed attempt to camp at Yosemite, Matt, Adan and I ended up at a campground he’d been to previously and we had an epic adventure. It was the start of a tradition of annual summer camping trips that went on for two decades. We returned to that same campground, Cherry Lake, several times over the years with many more friends for some legendary camp outs! In 1998, as one leg of a larger adventure, I spent two weeks with Matt in New York City while he was in law school. We wandered the streets of Manhattan til the wee hours, smoked freshly rolled Dominican cigars and he introduced me to his New York City. In the process he passed on his love of our mutual birth city to me. Earlier this year I had a vivid dream about an intense night of partying he and I had in Amsterdam the summer after we graduated high school. The next day I called him and told him about it and, after reminiscing about that epic summer backpacking trip, we agreed to start planning an old guy version of that adventure. I was really looking forward to it! Matt was a humble intellectual. He thought broadly and, in conversation, was always willing and able to go deep. He was authentic to the core. There are so many conversations I had yet to have with my friend! Like all of us, Matt had his flaws, but I always felt that his attributes far outweighed them. Many people lost contact with Matt years ago when he moved back to Hawaii and retreated from modern life a bit. It seems clear now, in hindsight, that his reclusiveness was motivated, at least in part, by the effort to combat the chronic pain that he was experiencing. Justin recently forwarded some of Matt’s writings to me and in them he wrote about Transcendence, “to climb beyond”…it occurred to me that his life was always about transcendence. I’d like to believe that Matthew has now achieved transcendence and has moved to the dimension beyond! Having Matt as a friend made me a better person. He was the kind of true friend that everyone deserves to have and a stellar human being —- and his passing has left a big, fat gaping hole in my heart. So, Matthew, if you’re listening…though I don’t feel as if your time was up yet…only you knew what it felt like to live in your body. Your drawn out battle with chronic pain is over and I hope you have finally found the comfort and peace that you so deserve. I’m incredibly grateful for the four decades of friendship that we shared.