Two women seeking equality in a state where some couples are more equal than others.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Confessions: I Still Suck at Grief

I miss my brother.

I thought I'd get better at grieving over time. I thought by the fifth year that - what? I'd graduate grief? Become a superior human being? Be rid of all my flaws?

To many people, it might look like I have. A student wrote an essay about cyberbullying and used an example of a student who died of depression and I didn't burst into tears. I tell people what happened to Josh matter-of-factly when they ask how many siblings I have.

But grief is a heavy, heavy weight. I don't think it ever gets lighter. I think that we just get stronger to carry it if we survive the first experience of the anvil falling. For those who anticipate the loss, maybe they do some sort of emotional CrossFit before it happens or brace themselves and that's why it seems like they manage even though they're trying to carry an invisible, out-of-tune grand piano. For those of us blindsided, we may collapse into a puddle and then hopefully someone does something and we somehow get back up and assemble the pieces that are left and figure out what the future looks like  
without the person we always saw as part of our happily ever after and  
with a metric ton of devastation on our backs.

I lost my brother. The one who conspired to keep transgressions from my parents. The one who could remind me that not everything was perfect when we grew up, but we were in it together. The one who could make fun of my terrible taste in music and pets and stories.

The one who called out my children's book collection as too heavy on female writers to make sure my male students could see themselves as writers too.

The one who taught me that everyone can love to read when they find something that interests them.

The one who patiently explained to me how to learn to juggle and how it works, even though I'm super clumsy and never learned how.

The one who promised to come to my wedding because it was a shame for no one from the family to be there.

Who didn't, because his mental illness had taken him before I managed to get married.

Who hasn't seen the house I've owned for a year now and the yard that's a mess.

Who won't ever meet his future nieces and nephews to play soccer in that messy backyard.

In my head, in the parallel universe where he's living, he's married to a sweet woman and probably has two children and works for a bank. He would have turned 27 last week.

The grief doesn't get lighter. It doesn't even stay the same weight. If anything, the weight grows as the things pile up that I want to tell him and I can't. Lily, the mutt we adopted right after I finished high school, that Josh trained, that probably to the day she passed would have gone to look out the window when we said, "Josh is home," even years after his passing, died this year. Dorian, the cat that my brother made fun of me for getting, died this year. He never met Cesar. He will never meet Harry. He will never meet my parents' new dog, Cookie. The world keeps rolling and snowballing all the things that he will never see.

This time of year, the distance between my universe and the parallel universe where he lives now gets thinner. His birthday, the day he died, the holidays - sometimes the gap seems so small that I think that if I reached out hard enough, I could pass him the butter pecan truffles from Fabiano's that I continue purchasing because he loved them, even though they're not my favorite.

And you can't see me now, but I'm crying, the kind of crying that wracks the soul so hard that there's no sound left to come out, and I wish I could tell those of you with fresher losses that it gets easier, but it doesn't. Your arms will grow longer, your back will grow stronger, and you will find new ways to love and new people to love, and the grief will not finish you, but the grief will never finish, either.

For me, the world is divided into the time before December 15th, 2011, when my back was upright, and the time after I was issued my anvil with no instruction manual. I'm grateful for all of those who have helped me carry it and sent me pages of the instruction manual they wrote from trial and error and gone along with the pages I have written for myself that don't make sense to anyone else. And I will try to share the load for those who have received their anvil this year and send you pages out of that nonsensical instruction manual.

The grief will not finish, but it will not finish us.



5 comments:

  1. Amazingly written. So sorry for your loss.

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  2. This was the first thing I read this morning at 8am. My prayers go up for you and your loved ones Erin! Reading does help people! This made me smile because Harry is by the way great taste for animals! Harry's my right hand man! �� I have been one of those people who brace themselves for loses and it still hurts and drives one to seek relief and closure. I wanted to seek revenge against anyone and anything over the murder of my brother! Then I found meditation and peace just in time.. I realized not all things or people are bad and evil. Things like disease and nature we try so hard to control and we have to know we can only do so much and we must stick together as one based on that fact. Nomatter the color of our skin or background. I'm here for you my friend and I'm lucky to be near you and be moved!

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    Replies
    1. I'm so very sorry for your loss, Ossie, and I'm honored if reading this helped in any way. We truly do need to stick together and do what we can. We're lucky to have you near as well!

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  3. This was the first thing I read this morning at 8am. My prayers go up for you and your loved ones Erin! Reading does help people! This made me smile because Harry is by the way great taste for animals! Harry's my right hand man! �� I have been one of those people who brace themselves for loses and it still hurts and drives one to seek relief and closure. I wanted to seek revenge against anyone and anything over the murder of my brother! Then I found meditation and peace just in time.. I realized not all things or people are bad and evil. Things like disease and nature we try so hard to control and we have to know we can only do so much and we must stick together as one based on that fact. Nomatter the color of our skin or background. I'm here for you my friend and I'm lucky to be near you and be moved!

    ReplyDelete