Recently in grief Category

This week will mark two years since my brother's death and the last time I saw his face. And while I am not going to spend the day huddled in a mournful, suffering ball--I do see that this time can be one of reflection. 

This is my brother, Bryan Canter.

He was born on September 4, 1984 and died on January 25, 2010. In between are a million memories and pieces of him all wrapped up and knotted in me. Thousands upon thousands of stories I don't have time to share or can not remember. 

I don't write about him or his passing as much as I once did. This might cause you to believe that I'm "over it". But as anyone who has lost someone dear to them knows, you never get "over it". You learn to live with the absence. You don't cry all the time, but you still will cry. 

*

I was in the book store with Jason. I turned and saw a new Nirvana book. It had foldouts of Kurt Cobain's scrapbooks. 

This would be the perfect gift for Bryan!, I thought. He will love this! 

It's like falling--this sudden intense mourning. A great pit opens in my chest and it is filled with sadness. 

No, I'm not "over it." 

I never will be.

*

Bryan was my little brother. We fought. He was annoying and rude. He was sweet and sensitive. He cried a lot. He often got in trouble. He stood up for me and protected me. He loved cats. He would eat my half of the junk food if I didn't lick it right in front of him. I used to yell, "Baby brother power!" and he would transform into my own personal Superhero to defend my honor. He loved smoking pot. Believe it or not, he used to be smaller than me. He would jump off the roof of my mother's house and into her pool (I didn't tell). I wish he was still here with us, but he's not. All we have left are our memories. 

I remember you, Bryan. 

*

I have always loved Christmas. I love the traditions, the anticipation, and the coming together of family. I love how everywhere you go, everyone and everything is swallowed up by the holiday. Growing up we always got a real tree. We'd decorate the tree with our ornaments. Bryan and I got one each year. We could trace each year of our lives by these ornaments. The round balls for Baby's First Christmas, the twin stitched felt horses, my swinging Santa, and my favorite--a wooden, pink-painted rocking horse with a red yarn mane and tail. My mother had thin wooden ornaments she had painted as a child and somewhere there was a Canter Family ornament lavishly made out of metal.

Each Christmas Eve we'd all pile in the car and drive to Connecticut for dinner with my mother's family. There was always a pasta dish with oil and anchovies that I could only get once a year. then home again sleeping in the car with blasts of cold air waking me up every time one of my parents rolled down the window while smoking a cigarette. 

In the middle of the night, Bryan would wake me and we'd sneak out and go through our stockings. This was our one concession to waiting for a decent time to wake our parents so we could open presents. As we got older, Bryan continued to wake me up way earlier than I cared for. He continued to peek in the corner of his presents and try to re-wrap them. And even as an adult, moved out of our mother's house, he tore through his presents as quickly as he could.

*

On Monday I finally got around to emptying out the collage I made for my brother's funeral. In the process, I broke the glass and scrapped a few photos. I was only after my favorite--taken for Christmas, of the two of us facing each other on the couch. It's slightly out of focus, but what I love the most is our wrinkled noses and mock disgust. My mother must have told us to kiss each other. With my arm around his shoulder and a teddy bear on my lap, we are level--eye to eye. You can hardly tell I am older. 

I gathered the rest of the photos and packed them away. I remembered almost two years ago now. Christmas and Bryan's death day a month apart but blurred together.

The day he died I was first trimester sick--nauseous, exhausted. I was eight weeks along and hardly able to function. I lived for River's nap time when I could rest and that day, I didn't get it. Instead, I got the news that he had died in a car accident. I functioned in a fog for the rest of the day. Heather came by and I don't know what kind of crazy conversation I might have had with her. I know I typed for this blog. I know I cried at the computer and then laughed. I thought out loud and then cried some more. Jason cooked venison and I tried to force myself to eat something knowing it would make me feel better. To this day, I'm not sure I can tolerate the smell of venison cooking. 

Somehow I packed for River and I.

Somehow I search the closet and  various photo albums for any pictures of Bryan--at my mother's request.

That night I hardly slept.

The next morning, I packed River into the car. I don't know how I made it to New York and my mother's, but somehow I did. I stopped to pee once and didn't stop again. When I got there--so tired and sick--my mother was arranging photos of Bryan into endless frames. I didn't rest. I didn't eat. I helped her collage photos and still more photos.

* 

These sorrowful memories echo all my bright ones like a shadow dragged behind stepping feet--leaning long and lanky and black on days so bright you have to squint your eyes. It doesn't destroy Christmas, but it adds another note, a little bruise, a bit of woe. 

I am even more thankful for another year here, another tree, another round of family traditions. I want to live. With appreciation and celebration, I want to live. These are the gifts my brother has left me-- memory and mourning, sadness and celebration. Coins that strike both sides of the spectrum. 

Life is balance. 

Life is both.

Everyone needs one of those feel good type books once in awhile. The type that remind us that even though life sucks sometimes, it has its silver lining. That trials come and go and we have to keep on trudging on--hopefully with minimal complaining and self pity. Hopefully, we can heal, forgive, and move forward while still welcoming joy into our lives. 

This is a book about nontraditional families and loss. Which suits my mood these last few days. 

I dreamed about Bryan the other night. I dreamed he had found a new pizza place and was happily eating pizza. Such a simple little dream, but so very real. The nobs of his knees through the baggy and worn fabric of his jeans, and his big block head, and sleepy, stoner eyes. His small teeth and sheepish smile. It was all there and when I woke up, I curled around the ache in my heart. 

I heard John Lennon's Christmas song on the radio. I could only think of how many times my mother played that last year--our first Christmas without Bryan. For the first time, I felt sadness beneath my excitement for the holidays. It crept up and numbed me. I just felt tired. Felt for a moment that I just wanted to sleep through the rest of the month. 

It grew worse after talking to my mother. She was always the Christmas spirit of the household. I can tell from her voice that Christmas is still just a hurdle (a hell hurdle even) to jump over this year--the same as last. 

I let out a big sad sigh from the deepest part of my gut where mourning never seems to end. 

I also saw a man today that looked a bit like my father taking his grandson out to play. I thought, with a measure of self pity and bitterness, how my Dad could have had that--if he wasn't a junkie. If he didn't just give up and whine. He could have had that too. He could have had me and my babies. He could have made some sort of effort. More than a few half ass visits arranged by Bryan and I, and half the time ruined by his whining/complaining/and general self-pity party.

I gave a little pat to the little girl in me that was is so greatly, sadly disappointed that I also didn't don't have that now. I recognized that I wanted it  want it. There is only a small persistent voice that used to scream how badly I wanted my Daddy to be someone he wasn't. To be that daughter's ideal. It's hard to admit that voice still remains in me at all. 

I haven't spoken to my father since a month after my brother died.

I wonder, this time of year and from a sick, knot of guilt, if I should do something about it. 

And, *head shake* I just don't want to think about any of this.

Those men of my life are one sad tangle in my being. 

A second sigh. 

This fugue will pass. I'll beat my melancholy back. But all sadness has it's moment. It needs a moment on center stage. It needs a bit of applause. Even though I hate feeling like the world is suddenly an anvil on my back--I can't always be merry this month. 

I have so much to be thankful for and so much joy. So much, I feel unworthy of it. 

Maybe I need to pick this book up again! 

My mother had a white cross made out of PCP piping that then screwed into a metal stake in the ground. She said she wanted something that would still stand when she was gone. Thus, the plastic pipe in place of those white wooden crosses you occasionally see on the side of the road. The cross went up at the site where my brother died to stand admits a rainbow of tapestries. I got the photo sent to me over my phone. 

My mother wrote the dates and endearments and her name. I just painted on "sissy" near the bottom. 

Happy Birthday, Bryan. 

Are you laughing at my grey hairs? 

Do you think it's funny that soon I will be four years older than you instead of a mere two? 

I still, this far from the day you died (which feels like ages), can't really wrap my head around the fact that you are gone.

Every September 4th, until the day I join you, will remain your day. 

"River, leave your sister alone!" is one of the most frequent phrases out of my mouth now that Sage is mobile. He is constantly pushing her over, trying to crawl between her legs, pulling her down on him, or hugging her against him so she can't get away. Her pissed off, forceful cries interrupt the quite moments. 

We've talked about communication. Her cries mean she wants to be left alone/to stop touching her--even if it is a nice touch (hugs).

We've talked about bullies who pick on people who are littler than them. 

We've talked out how Sage doesn't know how to be a fair person who shares yet and we must teach her. 

It's like seeing the past again. Only now it's my children squabbling. 

*

It must have been my mother's genius idea to remove our bedroom doors and hang the beads. I bet she always wanted door beads and yes, they were really cool looking. It was fun to walk back and forth through them and hear them clacking. What was not cool was the way my brother would park his ass in the hall outside the room where I was playing with my friend and watch us. I didn't want him in my space when I had a friend over and he wasn't. He was in the hall and had every right to be there challenging me to do something about it with his eyes. 

I could have given two shits what he and his friends did. In later years, I once ventured out because of the stomps on the roof and the following mighty splash to see Bryan and his pals jumping off the roof into the swimming pool. After the following exchange--- "Don't tell, Mom." "You know  how this works. She doesn't ask, I don't tell."---I returned to my room to write, paint or read, most likely. 

Once in high school I had a group of friends over to watch a new anime. My brother sauntered over, his typical self, and turned the VCR off. I asked him to stop and put it back on. He promptly did it again. I started yelling, I'm sure, and turned it back on. He-did-it-again. This was when I blacked out in my rare, intense rages and came to clawing his face and chest while shrieking wildly. He was yelling "Get her off me! Get her off me!" My friends pried me away. My scalp hurt badly for quite some time from him yanking my hair. 

*

Every night before River goes to bed he comes to tell Sage and I goodnight where we sit in the rocker. He goes to her first and lays his head on her, kisses her, tells her he loves her and goodnight little baby. He hugs her some more and then walks away. "Hey, what about me?" I ask. 

When Sage wakes from her naps, River takes off running for the bedroom and lays down with her talking baby talk and hugging her.

When I took River to the movies, just the two of us, he looked over and asked where Sage was and why she couldn't come too.

Sometimes in the backseat they hold hands. They laugh. They wiggle and shriek together. She looks over at him and waits to see what he'll do next. After some silence, he announces "Sage is asleep, mommy. Her little eyes are closed."

*

When Bryan told us he was getting married, he made his fiance put me in the wedding party. I was surprised he wanted me there.

When I saw him, the last Christmas, I ran up and gave him a hug and kiss. It always seemed to embarrass him.

He called me on the phone the day my mother learned he was using heroin. He said, "Mom told you?". He sounded relived and then he told me how hard it was and I listened. 

* 

There are ghosts. I see them in my children. Grief and joy are two sides of the same coin. The more my babies grow, the more I miss my brother. 

    "I don't know if I can bear to face his grief."

In grieving some people take comfort in sharing grief, others take comfort in giving comfort, and some want to be comforted above all else. People move between the three, but I usually fall most firmly in the middle zone. I have been and continue to be intimidated by grief in others. It hurts me to watch them hurt. It draws my attention to my own sadness. I don't really like to talk about it and if I do, I only do, when I can be calm about it, logical, contemplative or frank. I'd much rather try to make things right for other people than to have other people make a fuss over me. 

That's not always the way it is, of course. No matter what brave/foolish face I put on. I have my moments when some memory digs off the scab and leaves me feeling raw. I have nights when I've put my baby to sleep and sit beside her in the bed smoothing out my brother's T-shirt over the sheets and thinking about how his beating heart was once beneath just this part--there. 

*

Music is a big trigger. Any Nirvana song makes me raise one fist and think "This one's for you, Bryan!" I turn it up on the radio and try to remember the lyrics to sing along.

When Bryan died my mom was really into listening to the new Levon Helms album, Dirt Farmer. River loved one of the songs and would dance around for the entire thing. After Bryan's funeral, we put on this song and a bunch of friends and relations stood around River and watched him dance. It was a little spot of joy in an otherwise heartbreaking occasion. Then the second song came on, "The Mountain". 

I can't hear this song without being transported back to that moment. From laughter to, my brother is dead. I'll never see him again. This fucking sucks. 

And so, I drove along the highway sobbing my way through this song the other week. Swiping tears from my eyes so I could see the road while my babies napped in the backseat--oblivious. 

*

River asks me, "Why don't big people cry?"

"O, they do," Jason and I assure them. "Just as you get bigger, you don't cry as much." 

It's true. Scrapped knees and little offenses don't matter when you learn what really hurts. 

My brother and I were never geographically close to our extended families. I didn't have a mess of cousins my age to play with, no close aunts or uncles or grandparents. My grandmothers weren't around to take me to dinner once a week. My sister was all the way in Kentucky and how I wish, wished, wished I had her wisdom and protection growing up. I always wanted more siblings. I was always somewhat envious of big boisterous families. My father was an unreliable drunk who periodically dropped the Daddy ball and later vanished from the state or into prison. My mother had to work and hold things together to care for us. My brother and I were friends for a time until the shit hit the fan when I was around age thirteen. I went to high school and didn't have time for my delinquent and annoying little brother. I wanted to be left alone to read in bed and learn to draw. 

And so, I swore I would never ever take my children away from my mother. I wanted them to have her close, but life had other plans. We ended up in Baltimore with no extended family anywhere near us. 

Bryan died in January of 2010 and some of the first words out of my mouth were, "I am alone now."

I realize that, despite our best intentions, we are selfish creatures. To be unselfish is to force ourselves to be better people, but for most of us, it doesn't come naturally. That the reasons Jason does not want a third child--finances, time, and stress are his need to have more time for himself and more money for himself are not really so different from my want of another child--more love for myself. 

I also want another child for my children in the hopes that neither of them feel lonely--though I'm sure they could still feel lonely with another sibling. That lonely is just part of growing up. 

Still, I think of my mother saying she wished she had another after Bryan died. I think of my unwilling status as an only (living) child, and my heart seizes up in panic. I don't want to have that regret and I don't want my children to stand in my shoes (sibling-less)

More, just one more-- as if another child could fill the gap that held my brother. (It, I know, can not) 

More, just one more--as if I can somehow make up for what already went before. Add another body--

to a narrow twin sized bed on Christmas Eve while we waited for Santa Claus

to our games of pretend

to take my side in a fight or team up with Bryan against me. 

Sometimes when I rock my babies, kiss their heads, and pull them tight against me I am trying to hold my child self. 

What would I tell her if I could?

That it's true (her mantra) it will be okay. 

To hold her brother more dear, even if he is fucking annoying and rude and precious (she didn't know how precious).

To not let him get in that car that morning. 

To stop her father. To kick him away from her brother. To tell him to go leech off someone else--you stupid, selfish man.

I know that these thoughts don't have a point but a bit of personal torture. Mostly, I can be at peace with what is and not worry about what may or may not be.

But we all have our moments of weakness, worries, and niggling obsessions.

What has passed.

What could happen.

What probably won't.

What I would do differently, if only I could.  

I don't hold much stock in dates. Each day he in gone and in my opinion it doesn't matter for how long because this will never change. He's still somewhere I am not. Yesterday, today, tomorrow and the many days after that.

In other words, every day sucks equally in that regard. 

Everyone has been saying, "This Christmas is going to be hard on you and your mom." Over and over and over with concern and wise warning and pity. 

This Christmas. This very first one with Bryan in it.

It wasn't hard. 

Hard was hearing that he was dead. Hard was seeing him dead. Hard was the coming to terms with the fact that he was dead, that it was no one's fault, that I would never see him living again, and that life is brutally unfair. 

So no, Christmas was not hard. I didn't dread it or want to sleep through it. 

I still enjoyed my Christmas because I have so much to be thankful for and I love being with family and seeing friends. 

Though, honestly, there was a spark missing. As if I couldn't commit myself totally into the "fun". It didn't feel as special or right somehow. 

Loosing someone changes people. It can make them better, stronger people or lower them with pain and suffering. Either way, people are changed. A little joy is snuffed out from the world with loss and a little hurt put in its place. One that never completely heals. It scars, it aches when it rains, it itches, it stings. 

Instead of watching my brother rip through his pile of presents a mile a minute, we had this. Candles we lit before opening gifts and left burning all day. My mom, Jason, and I reading and then fumbling with matches. 

I had memories of him waking me up at 2:00 in the morning to go through our stockings and watch him peek at the pried into corners of his gifts, but no one to tease about it. 

I said, "Merry Christmas, Bryan" and suggested we turn his photo to "watch" us unwrap gifts. I could only imagine his fingers somewhere twitching as he remembered his once-upon-a-time anticipation from Christmas mornings gone past when he was with us. 

I passed Bryan in the driveway as he was returning home. 

Maybe we'd meet for breakfast? 

Sure, tomorrow. 

We didn't and that was that. 

Sage was inside me, making me tired and testy. I had no idea. Just as I didn't know my brother would be dead in a month. That the next time I saw him, he'd be an empty shell that vaguely resembled the man I'd last seen through a steady drizzle of rain. A motionless, frozen, made-up shell laying in a box. One whose last breath had mysteriously left his body in the wreckage of his car beside a grey river. There was no doubt in my mind that what made Bryan, Bryan had fled his body. That in that car his body got the message that it was abandoned in slow ticks--like the cooling engine of his car. 

*

Jason calls me a hipster with exasperation. I don't really know what that means, but Wikipedia can give you this definition. If you go by that one I am even more confused because pop culture and I aren't very familiar with each other. Urban dictionary seems to have a somewhat better fit. 

My dear friend, Amanda, was here over the weekend and she extended this all to me being a feminist, hipster, zen. 

Femsterzen, let's say. 

And proud, roar!

Zen is a new thing and just as Amanda always does--she can take me and sum me up in a way I never thought of myself. 

It's absolutely true. 

She's absolutely right. 

I can be thankful, despite the pain of this last year. 

I can see the good in the bad.

I sometimes have to fight tooth and nail to do so. 

I suck at holding a grudge.

I try to see the positive.

I try...

*

While I would love to have the power to turn back time and pluck my brother from his car before he could slip completely behind the wheel, I feel like loosing Bryan has made me a better person. That is not to say that his death was in any way an okay price to pay for whatever personal changes have rippled from that event. 

Not-at-all. 

Nor am I or will I ever be okay with him not living. I am still overcome with moments of deep sorrow when the hole his absence has made feels bottomless. Usually in the shower (which Amanda will also understand). It always makes me laugh. I think about my dead brother while naked in the shower.

But the shower is a peaceful place where I sometimes get to enjoy a silent moment alone. I write his name in the steam on the door and whisper that I miss him still. That it still feels unreal that he is gone.

*

We can't control what life throws at us. What it gives or takes away. We only control how we respond. I said at Bryan's funeral that his death should make us want to be better people. That if we just let it drag us down we betray his memory. 

I still hold to that.

*

A little bit of random wisdom.

"Only if you've gone through the darkest times, will you understand...Only after something has become contaminated and marred will it become a beautiful thing. Pain can be healed with gentle care. Darkness can be removed with sunlight. Don't underestimate the small things. Everything is significant. Every time you fall down or take a wrong path, it isn't wasted. You will surely develop and grow over time. This is, as long as you don't consider it a waste..."

--Fruits Basket

*

Dear Readers,

A very Merry Christmas to you all.

Don't consider it a waste.

Ever.

Love,

The Femsterzen herself