Do you have any siblings?

To tell, or not to tell. That is the question.

I think that if push comes to shove I could write this in the vein of Hamlet, struggling with my inner thoughts, and my very life, as it hangs in the balance. But I will spare you the Shakespearean language, and explain.

There comes a point in every conversation I have with someone I meet for the first time when I'm asked if I have any siblings. When I can since this question forming in the person's mind; I cringe. (And yes I believe I can tell.) Sometimes the topic of siblings happens by mistake, sometimes I bring it up--unconsciously still thinking I have one--and sometimes it's just random.

I have two choices; lie or tell the truth.

The truth is that  my parents only have one child, but that doesn't seem to quite fit my situation. The truth is that I am now an only child, not by nature of my parent's inability to produce another child, but because of death. The lie, while quite easy to say, "I'm an only child," brings with it unexpected results. Either I have uncomfortable exchanges with people when they feel sorry I did not get to experience siblings. (I usually just smile and say I have a big family, which is at least true.) The lie can also produce a horrible result. A few months ago, I was sitting in the dinning hall at a table with a bunch of people and a person turned to me and asked if I had any siblings, and I said "no." He said, "Lucky."
It was in that moment when I realized that the lie, which I thought would be easy, cut deeper into me than anything else. Deeper than the thought of his death is my denial of my brother's life. I had a brother that died. It's a simple sentence. And I can be strong enough to endure people's polite "I'm sorry"'s  because at least I acknowledge Brian's existence, however short.
The insistence upon the truth also prevents me from trying to remember who knows and who doesn't know. If I tell someone I don't have any siblings and then the next day they hear me talking of growing up with a brother, what will they think? Yes, I do honestly think of that, and it bothers me.
Today, I shared the death of my brother with yet another person I met. She said "I'm so sorry." and I said "Thank you." And we went through the details, when, how, and how old. It's a formula that I'm use to. It's a formula that I'm sure will never end.

I think that there will always be a part of me that wants to lie and not share the deep pain that accompanies sibling loss with a possible stranger. It is much better than tearing apart my heart to appease someone's weird fascination with asking questions about a deceased person. I often wonder if I said my brother was an infant, if people would think of it as less of a loss. Or if I said it happened 20 years ago, if they'd believe that is an acceptable time period and I should be over it. And if they catalog the death stories they hear and believe that some means of death don't need sympathy. I know people mean well, but all of this coupled with my grief make it just so tempting to lie.

home

Today is the last day of my visit home. I've spent nearly three weeks in Massachusetts. Tomorrow I will be flying back to D.C.. My Florida trip has made me not scared of planes anymore. Thankfully.
It's an odd feeling being at home again. The last time I was here was January. Not much has changed in this small New England town. The house hasn't changed either. But little changes in my brother's room have started to happen.
The door to his room is no longer covered with the random assortment of buttons, pieces of paper and various printed versions of my brother's name. There are things taken down from the wall, and a box of random things on the tv stand where the eight-track player once lived. My boyfriend came to stay for a few days, and honestly before he came (and stayed in the room) it looked like my brother had just been home. The top of the dresser has his deodorant, random papers, mints, etc.. All signs of my brother's life. And now all pushed into the top drawers of the dresser, in hopes of presenting the room as empty. Although the wall still have posters, and if you really look around it is full of my brother's possessions. It at least no longer looks like my brother is simply gone away for the weekend.
It's a change that will be finalized soon. At least that is what my parents keep saying. My father remarked that its something he wants to do, clean the room, but every time he tries to, he cannot part with anything that once was my brother's. Its a double edge sword, because my brother is gone, and the things he once used does not bring us any closer to my brother now. Yet, its hard to hold something in your hand, and realize that Brian used this, or Brian use to play with this. It is especially hard to throw something away if you remember Brian using it.
My thoughts this afternoon have to do with home, and what it means to be home, and who makes up this "being home." After my brother died I use to wish him to just return home. I remember sitting up late at night on the computer waiting, hopelessly, for him to come home. When I moved to D.C. I was worried that my brother didn't know that I would have left home, so somehow he wouldn't be able to find me-if he was watching me.
I call my dorm in DC home. I call the house I am now staying in home. Depending upon the person I am speaking to, and where I am. Is my dorm really a home. Not really, but it where I live, and a person who I love lives a few dorm rooms down from me. But the house in Massachusetts will always be my home. Even years from now when this house is sold. This is the last place my brother lived, and regardless of the fact that my old house, with much more family history, that I moved out of when I was twelve, will always be the "true home" for me, this house holds much more memories. I hashed out the troubling times of my teenage years in this house. I spoke on the phone to my first boyfriend in my room, and last night I spoke with my current boyfriend, on my cell phone, in my room.
I miss my brother when I am home. When I am away, I always wish that when I return home, that maybe Brian would be home too. It's something that, after two years, I should know just cannot happen. It still catches me off guard when I realize that it has almost been two years since he died. And I'm growing into the realization that I will always be able to feel the weight of his death in the depths of my soul. And I am still trying to figure out what it means to truly be at home, or really go home. I hate the trite saying "you can never go home again" or some version of that idiom. Except that my home has so radically changed over the course of the last two years, that what remains is a working house, with the remains of a life, lived fast and ended too soon.

sense...since

I wish I had written a few weeks ago. I had woken up in the morning from a strange and oddly familiar dream. I dreamt of my brother. I cherish the nights when I'm able to be with him once again. Its an odd mixture of happiness and deep sadness that these dreams conjure up within me. When I'm awake, even if it is silent and I close my eyes, I cannot remember the sound of his voice speaking, but in my dreams, he speaks and it is so clear.

Five days ago would have been my brother's 23rd birthday. I made a facebook event and invited friends and family to join in celebrating his life by doing something wonderful for someone else. I let myself cry on his birthday. I try often not to cry because when I do it hurts too much. I cried though, hard, in the shower. I felt like I could double over in pain as the tears cascaded down my face. I realized something, and am slowly realizing it still today that this is never really going to go away. And honestly, I feel like if I don't think of Brian once a day, then I've forgotten him. The majority of the time I laugh when I think of him. I tell stories to friends of our crazy antics as children.

In less than two weeks I will be flying (for the first time!!!) to Florida to go on vacation at Disney with my boyfriend and his family. It will be such a wonderful experience. I think it will be good to get away from school and the dorm for a while. Escaping homework and classes right before exams and final projects will be a challenge, but well worth the stress relief that comes with vacations.

I am learning to live with the mixture that has become my life; hopeful expectations and painful sad memories, contentment and anxiety, happiness and longing. These and other wonderful dichotomies fill my life and are making me the person I have become....since my brother died.

on this Ash Wednesday

About four years ago was the first time I recieved ashes on Ash Wednesday. I am Methodist, and as a child I always thought ashes were a "Catholic thing." I had evidence, only my Catholic friends had ashes on their forehead at school, and only my Catholic friends got to leave school during various times to get ashes. So four years ago when I recieved the ashes I was thankful to now understand the significance. Although I look back and I don't think I fully understood.
My pastor, like the pastor tonight, said "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." It is powerful, but tonight it hit me like a ton of bricks. I've held the very dust my body will return to in my hands. I've felt dust, and I will return to that very dust.
In a previous post I've mentioned handling my brother's ashes. And tonight during worship that memory persisted. I enter this season of Lent focused on the eventual cross that brings hope of new life, light that brings a new day and joy. Yet, before I can reach the cross I must look inward, and fully figure out the words spoken to me as a cross of ashes was drawn on my forehead. Remember...that...you...are...dust. I am nothing, I am flesh, I am mortal. And...to...dust...you...shall...return. I am nothing. I will be dust. "But God gives us the free gift of life forever in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
When I try to internalize all of this my stomach turns and I feel sick and sad. I miss my brother. I can't plead for his return, because it is pointless. As I enter the season of Lent the grieving for my brother is renewed. I feel the same numbness that I felt the first night I had to close my eyes knowing my brother was no longer in the world. The realization of his loss sends shock waves throughout my body, a quiet reminder that his death is true. These forty days leading up to Easter will be for me a slow, steady, heart breaking, gut wrenching climb to finally see the glory of the cross, and the mystery and wonderful joy of the empty tomb. Believe me it is not easy, I want to run, I want to curl up in a ball and cry until my body ceases to produce tears. I fight against this urge every single moment of every single day.

today is not unlike yesterday

Last night I started crying and this morning again I find myself holding back tears. I'm not sure of the reason anymore. I know that I need to admit to myself that I can't figure this all out on my own and that maybe talking to a professional would help me. However, it is a lot easier to type it or even just think it. It is a lot hard to dial the phone number.

I think part of the hesitation is the New England culture in which I was raised. In my home I never saw my parents cry. I know now they both had much to actually cry about. I remember very vividly sitting in my great Aunt's house watching an old movie (that was recently transfered onto VHS tape) and seeing my mother's sister riding a horse. I watched as that scene caused my grandmother to begin to cry, a loud sobbing cry. She left the room and when I tried to follow her my grandfather told me to sit. I was never quite sure why I was not allowed to follow my crying grandmother, or why I was never fully explained her reaction to the video until years later. The pain, hurt and devastation was not known to me until I was a teenager. It was kept hidden. This is the model I was raised on. When I cry, I do so but only so long and then its back to business as normal. It is this very reason I think I can cry so easily. It is this very reason that when I look at a picture of my brother sometimes my stomach turns and I feel the rush of his loss new again.

Our lovely bones

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections -- sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent-- that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.

I recently reread the book The Lovely Bones, and the quotation above is from that novel. I had read the novel during my senior year in college and enjoyed it deeply. However, the experience of my brother's death has shaped by opinion and reaction to the novel in a different way. I view Susie as I'd like to think of my brother, looking down on earth from heaven. While my brother was not murdered, his death was sudden, unexpected and he had no chance of saying goodbye, and in turn we could not say goodbye to him. This unexpectedness leads to many questions. The question of not knowing, and sometimes not wanting to know, how his final moments on earth were spent.
I think, though, the part of the book I find hardest, is the understanding Susie gains while watching her friends and family on earth. She finally realizes that their lives continue, and continue without her. Experiences are had that she herself can never experience and that moving forward without her is natural, expected and uncontrollable. Its hard for me to think of my brother coming to this same realization. Yet I know that if like Susie he's been watching, then he's most likely turned away from earth and moved into heaven. My greatest fear is that one day I'll go many days, weeks or months without thinking about my brother. My fear is that one day I won't remember how his voice sounded or be able to close my eyes and see his face, his height. Like Susie's sister in the book I find myself in a healthy loving relationship, planning with him vacations and class schedules. There are days when I forget I have a brother that died. I am part of the lovely bones that have sprung up since my brother's death. Along with my parents, close family and friends we have attempted to figure out life, the life we live without his presence Life had to continue. It couldn't stop at my brother's death, and however painful and unbearable his death I cannot change anything. I'd like to think of my brother in his heaven; riding a motorcycle on a bright sunny summer day. The roads empty of other traffic, just him and the loud hum of the distinct Harley Davidson motor, and because of it being his heaven the breeze would be just cool enough to not make him sweat. The open road before him, and no care in the world. He'd ride to the beach, and walk down the shore, watching the waves, and tides pushing towards shore. And maybe that is the night he'd understand the world without him, and that everything will be okay.

Jeremiah

Typically one finds themselves crying in a classroom due to either a bad grade or some other school related problem. Maybe some people cry in classrooms due to some subject matter covered that sparks something deep inside and the emotions rush forth and manifest as tears. I was in my Hebrew Bible class and I started to cry. Nothing noticeable. The professor didn't notice and neither did my friends. Small little tears that stay in your eyes were blurring my vision. I felt the small rush of heat that accompanies my tears.
As we read over the laments in the book of Jeremiah I found myself constantly thinking about August of 2008. I remember the numbness I felt towards God when I found out my brother died. I can still recall the feeling of my body, the feeling in my hands and toes when I heard the words from my father's mouth.
It is Jeremiah who calls out to the Lord. “I ate your words” Jeremiah accuses and yet I’m left here in despair. This is how I felt. In the moments and minutes and hours after my brother’s death sunk in. I lived in the world of deep joy and praise of God. Attending church every Sunday and realizing that God is a God who does great things in people’s lives. Although bad things happen, it was always something that I could either brush away or a question I just avoided.
Yet when my brother died it was a fast decent into numbing coldness. An empty place within my soul-my nephesh-my entire being. So in class as I read the words of Jeremiah, I felt a connection like never before to words in the Bible. These were not happy words, they were not words to comfort me, but finally they were words that encompassed my feeling, my emotions fully.
I wondered why I was never shown this verse in Jeremiah. I met with my pastor just once after my brother died. Yet never did she offer this as a verse that might comfort me. There is not blaming in this thought. I tried to keep things together emotionally. I think that people misunderstood that for me having moved on and/or accepted my brother’s death. Of course I accept it. There is nothing I can do to get him back. He is dead, there is no way I can refute that fact. But it doesn’t mean that I can move into the realm of acceptance. This comes only after dealing with all my emotions concerning his death. I’m still bouncing around the stages of grief. Somedays I’m angry, and others sad. Although sad doesn’t seem to fully cover the emotion I feel on that day. Sad is too simple. Sad to me in a throw away word. On days when I say I’m sad, I feel like there is a weight pressing against my chest, a numbness in my limbs and an overall feeling of tiredness, when I’m not actually tired. And some days I just want to be alone. And other days I feel happy.
Yet now that I’ve found the laments of Jeremiah, my feels have been unleashed. I have been quiet during the past week. I’ve been thinking. I know have a whole part of the Bible that I was never introduced to before and I’m loving it. I take comfort in Jeremiah’s words of anguish because they are so much like my own.