Laughter from beneath the leaves

It is fall. Autumn has always been my favorite season. The leaves on the trees turn a rich warm orange, red and yellow and spiral down to the earth below. I love walking through piles of leaves that have blown over a sidewalk. I love walking underneath trees while the leaves fall. I love the smell of the damp leaves, and feeling the mist on my face. I love wrapping myself up in a sweater or an extra blanket to keep cozy and keep the cold out. 

When I was younger my parents would buy the bright orange leaves bags with black carved pumpkin faces printed on them. On a nice Saturday afternoon my brother and I, along with help from our parents, would rake the leaves and fill the bags. Of course we would rake all the leaves into giant piles in the front yard and instead of filling the bags we'd run through the leaves, or jump into the pile. I remember throwing bunches of leaves up over my head and sitting amongst the leaves.

There are pictures, in a photo album, of my brother and I playing in the leaves. When I look at those pictures, they are memorized in my head, I can hear the laughter of my brother. The small laughter of a four year old boy echos in my mind and all I can do is smile. 

So autumn, the season of change, the change from growing, and new life into a period of quiet death and wait, is my favorite. It is a season of transition. It is a time of year while looking at the multicolored leaves when I remember long walks in the woods with my brother and father, it is the time of year when I remember stacking wood in piles with my Great Uncle, while my brother tried to help, it is the time of year when I remember the laughter of raking leaves with my little brother. 

ouch...wrestling hurts

My daily devotional today is the scripture from Genesis where Jacob wrestles with God. All night he wrestles with a man, and does not give in. Simply re-reading this passage a few times I think of this in terms of my own struggle. I've stayed up countless nights wrestling with my emotions. I've cried until it hurt to produce tears. I've cried until I stopped breathing for a few seconds. However hard I've struggled with my emotions at night, I survived until the morning. I've either stayed up or woken up to the light of the dawn. 

Jacob survives the night, is blessed and renamed by God and ultimately reconciles with his brother Esau after all the wrong. The idea of wrestling with God is something that goes beyond simply crying for me. I am still angry with God. There are moments when I feel the anger more, when I feel the distance. I cannot see a time when I will be okay with the death of my brother in relation to how I see God. There will always be tension. I am willing to live in that tension. I trust God that he will not fail me. I trust in God that even during this period of me wrestling that he still loves me unconditionally. Maybe it's not this simple.

Yesterday's devotion, the first in my book of 365 devotions, was about reconciliation. It is a fitting topic and something I've been thinking about recently. I feel the separation between myself and God. I feel it sometimes very deeply in my core. I yearn for the closeness I once felt. I want to be held in his hands again, or feel like I'm being held in his hands again. Yet the anger I still feel about my brother's death inhibits my relationship with God. It inhibits my full attention to the workings of God in my life. I am blessed. I am a child of God. I am loved. But in the midst of all that, in the midst of loving God, my brother died. 

we are all just dust...

A week before the anniversary of my brother's death I decided that I simply could not sit home and cry. I could not remember my brother by doing nothing. I needed to get out of my house, get out of the state, get out of my world and do something. The only one of his friends that I spoke to regularly, Jessie, had spoken to me about my plans for the anniversary a few weeks prior so she was the first one I proposed my idea to. She was instantly on board and within four days we had figured most of the plans out. 

On Sunday, August 2nd I drove down to NYC to pick Jessie up and we began our journey. We planned on driving to Florida, a place my brother lived for a year and a half. This journey was not about Florida. It was about getting away. 

The night before I left my father and I spoke about the other plan I had for the Florida trip. When my brother and I spoke while he was in Florida, he always spoke of Cocoa Beach. He posted photos of Cocoa Beach on myspace and after he returned home still spoke of this beach. It is with this knowledge that I made my mind up that I would spread some of his ashes on the beach and in the ocean. Although growing up my family never vacationed at the ocean, the thought of my brother's ashes floating in the ocean, spreading out across the world, made sense. 

The morning, on the day I was leaving, my father transfered some of my brother's ashes into a small heart shaped tin, and another small container. He handed them both to me and I placed them both in my car. 

The tin and container stayed in the car the entire road trip down to Florida. Jessie and I hardly remembered they were in there. We arrived in Florida on the 4th of August. At 8:04 pm we were eating dinner with my family friends at their house, which was also where we were staying. I remember thinking: I made it one year, I am still in one piece. It took us until Saturday to get to Cocoa Beach. It was a beautiful summer day. Hot sun, and a bit of a breeze. The ocean expanded out to the horizon, flat and endless. We were there all day before I removed the small tin container from my backpack and opened it gently. Silently I took a small pinch of ashes and sprinkled it gently on the sand. My fingers were stained. The ashes invading my fingerprints. As I sprinkled more into the sand, and ran my hands deep within the mounds of sand around me, mixing everything together, tears ran from my eyes, streaming down my checks. In silence I took a handful of ashes and walked to the edge of the ocean. I remember hearing children laughing, voices of parents, of couples. I remember the cool water lapping at my toes, the waves moving quicker in and out. I walked until my knees were emerged in the water and plunged my hands into the ocean. The water washed my hands as I opened them up, releasing my brother's ashes into the sea. I stood and looked towards the endless expanse of space in front of me. 

Our road trip was fun and tiring, adventurous and boring, sad and ultimately happy. 

a new beginning

On August 22nd, 2009 I moved to Washington DC. On August 22nd, I moved out of my parent's house, well all of my stuff is still there, and that is still my official residence. On August 22nd, I decided that seminary, graduate school, was the next step on the journey. 

After my brother's death making concrete plans never worked. I couldn't think of anything past a few days. I couldn't plan an activity more than four days away. I had wanted to go to seminary before his death. I remember sitting on the side porch of my house on a summer evening in July, 2008, less than a month before he died, talking about visiting Washington DC. I even asked him if he wanted to come with me. I remember him smiling at me and saying "As long as you drive." We never spoke of him visiting the school again with me, but it was definitely a possibility. I kept that conversation in mind when just three months after his death I decided that I was going to apply to attend that seminary. 

There is a part of me that didn't want to leave home. Home was where my brother knew I was. Home was the last place my brother slept. Home was the place where my brother was returned to after work. Home held memories of my brother's life that could never be replicated. Home is safe. Home is secure. Yet, that conversation reminded me that Brian knew what I was planning. He knew the future I was trying to secure for myself. So that if I left for seminary, my brother would know where to find me. 

After securing recommendations from the appropriate people, at the very last minute, I rushed to the post office the day before the application was due and overnighted the application to the seminary. I called the next day to make sure it was received and that I would still be considered for the merit scholarships. I had taken a step forward, and I just needed to wait. 

Weeks past and I received an invitation to the merit scholarship weekend and a week later I received the congratulations letter welcoming me to Wesley Theological Seminary. I remember the mixture of fear and joy upon reading the accepting words. This was something I had hoped for, and something I wanted, deep down inside. I just needed to figure everything else out.

The summer presented itself with many firsts. After I quit my job in mid-July I had the first summer vacation in five years, and in August was the first anniversary of my brother's death. Sometimes I can't believe its been over a year since he died. I remember it vividly, but I have come to realize that no matter how many years pass I will always remember the moments of that night like they just happened: that memory will never fade. 

So, on a rainy night in the nation's capital, I sit on my dorm size twin bed and think. I have piles of reading to accomplish, but somehow my mind wanders to the moment when I decided to tell my brother of my plans to attend seminary. I search my mind for the picture of his face that night that I know is stored somewhere in my memory. I search for the sound of his voice and close my eyes thinking maybe, just maybe I'd hear his laugh.