This morning, she pulls out a stuffed frog that I took from your house—one of many stuffed animals lying around. You really were like Tom Hanks’s character in Big. (You loved that movie, justifiably so.) The tag still attached reads Fiesta. It’s the only plush toy in the bin with the tag still attached, but I want to preserve its authenticity. I have such a reflexive urge to text you and ask you where you got this shitty little frog with the Fiesta tag. Instead, I look into the frog’s beady little eyes and futilely ask him for an answer.
Then, Iris brings over this little yellow book called Hand Hand Fingers Thumb about millions of drumming monkeys. (You were a drummer.) At that moment, there’s a huge crash of thunder, and the power goes out for a split second. I walk into the bedroom to check in with Mike, and the digital clock reads 4:20. Your birthday.
1. The frog.
2. The drumming monkeys.
3. The thunder.
4. The blackout.
5. Your birthday.
All in a matter of moments.
Is it you? Or is this what the grieving do?
Do we need to find meaning in the mundane?
Do we need to make connections where coincidences used to occur?
Is this what we have to do to keep going?
• • •
Iris has her six-month follow-up hearing test in the morning. Needless to say, I feel like I might die of an anxiety attack. It’s in these moments that I would text you and freak out and you would reassure me that it would be fine, and you would say it in such a way that made me feel ridiculous for even stressing about it in the first place. Only you could do that.
So, I do what any grief-stricken, crazy person would do and talk to you out loud like you’re a spirit or a ghost or something. I ask you to watch over Iris tomorrow and protect her. I’ve literally never talked out loud to something or someone who isn’t there. (I mean, I did it at the cemetery, but you were kind of there, beneath me.) Mid-conversation, I ask: “Are you listening to me, Harris?” And I look out the window at the sky, and in my mind, I think, If you are listening to me, make a bird fly across the sky right now, and right then, three birds fly across the sky. My heart sinks in a good way. I smile. My eyes water.
I tell Mike about my “conversation” with you later that night before we go to bed.
“That’s a lot of pressure to put on a dead person,” he says.
Now, every morning, I open the blinds over the kitchen sink and say hi and wait for a bird to fly by. This is probably what crazy people do. And then there are these tiny, white feathers all over my front and back yard. My neighbors on either side have none. Maybe my yard has always been littered with tiny white feathers and I just never noticed, but now they’re all I see. Mom told me a white feather is a sign from your loved one up in heaven. I felt sorry for her at the time that she had to cling to such a delusional notion for comfort. But now I see white feathers everywhere. The other day, one floated right in front of my face in the car. Like, while I was driving. And it’s a sign that you’re still here. You’re in everything, but your everythingness no longer makes me hit the ground. Rather, it brings an unfamiliar sense of peace and comfort.
I mean, is this what God feels like? I certainly don’t want to compare my dead brother to God, but the feeling that some sort of invisible energy or spirit is out there and accessible is wholly unfamiliar. People always say things like: “Oh, I don’t believe in God, but I’m spiritual.” I’m not even “spiritual.” Neither were you. This is why you always got hung up on the Twelve Steps. The higher power was always too elusive.
I’ve always turned to my loved ones, my therapist, my pattern of feeling my feelings deeply, making ahas, and moving on in a positive direction having learned something deeper about myself and the world. I haven’t ever turned to something invisible. I’ve never felt like something up above had my back. But now I sort of feel like someone in the universe is looking out for me. For the first time in my life, I have faith in something larger than myself: I have faith in the spirit of Harris.
This sounds like something a defense attorney could use in a court of law as proof that a person has come undone. But I know that, for now, in order to get out of bed every morning, in order to put one foot in front of the other, I need to believe it’s true.
By the way, the hearing test went fine. There’s been no change, and her hearing loss is still stable. For now.
Thank you, Harris.
14 Before
July 2014
A few months after Harris got out of the fancy rehab in Malibu, my parents, the baby, Mike, and I met him in Park City, Utah, for our annual summer vacation. I was hoping for an escape from The Land of Hearing-Loss Hysteria, and much of the trip served its purpose. By day, we took the baby on her first train ride; by night, we played rounds and rounds of Mexican Train as a family at the dining room table in the hotel suite we all shared. One afternoon, Mike’s mom and her boyfriend traveled in from Scottsdale, and we met them for high tea at this fancy hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. Another day, we went to a big, outdoor farmers’ market where we got Iris these superfly, handmade, yellow moccasins that she wore on her feet until they all but unraveled. Uncle
