It starts all over again. Every day, wading around in the toxic waste of longing for a person who will never return.
I certainly feel moments of intense pride and delight. There are also acute moments of exhaustion and the blood-boiling frustration of constantly negotiating with an individual who has not yet developed the mechanics of rational thought. This is how it is for any parent of a small child. It’s all very normal in this way. There are highs and lows. It’s just that, in the midst of my highs and lows, I’m always thinking of my dead brother. It adds another layer of low.
Thinking of you is as reflexive as blinking, although the thought is no longer a drone strike. I’m no longer standing in a field, bracing myself, looking up at the sky in terror. This isn’t a war zone. This is just how it works now: I feel my feelings of despair, get out of bed, and participate in the world anyway.
I finally understand the meaning of acceptance on the grief chart. It’s not that the bereaved ever accepts the death of the loved one—I will never accept your death—it’s that you come to accept that these really are your shitty, irreversible circumstances. One day, it just becomes clear: this is the way it is now. The delusions, denial, hysterics, depression, torment—it eventually starts to melt into this pit of mush that lives in your stomach and just sort of weighs you down. It’s not even necessarily fueled by emotion any more. It’s just the way your body works now. Like the day you accept that your stomach will never again look the way it did before you grew a child in it. You’re never gonna like it, but you’ll eventually get to a point where you go to the fucking store and buy pants that are the next size up because you have to wear pants. Acceptance.
• • •
January marches on. The mushy-stomach feeling is compounded by the fact that my family has literally been sick since early December. I know you hate overuse of the word literally, but this is an instance of justified and appropriate usage. On December 21, Iris had to get ear tubes for chronic ear infections, which is a minor surgery with anesthesia and the whole nine. Then, she got another cold and cough a couple days after going back to school. Then Mike got her cold and cough, which developed into bronchitis. I got some horrific cold or flu that forced me into a sleep state for three full days. Two days on the mend and then a sinus infection. Meanwhile, Iris developed pink eye and vomited four times in one night. We literally ran out of clean sheets. The next day, she was running a high fever and had to stay home from school the rest of the week.
Now, we’re all stuck watching Sofia the (Fucking) First on repeat, surrounded by mountains of dirty tissues and coughs that shake the walls of the house. It’s hard to be stuck in some sort of emotional feedback loop when four loads of your child’s vomit-soaked laundry and pajamas need attention in the middle of the night. In this way, toddlers are an ideal distraction from grief. Everything revolves around them, and everything must be done right now. Trying to get the fever to break, running around the park on a gorgeous day, navigating the world’s most irrational tantrum—there’s no time to stop and think. It’s all go-go-go, now-now-now-now.
I think we’re all just doing our best to survive the inevitable pain and suffering that walks alongside us through life. Long ago, it was wild animals and deadly poxes and harsh terrain. I learned about it playing The Oregon Trail on an old IBM in my computer class in the fourth grade. The nature of the trail has changed, but we keep trekking along. We trek through the death of a sibling, a child, a parent, a partner, a spouse; the failed marriage, the crippling debt, the necessary abortion, the paralyzing infertility, the permanent disability, the job you can’t seem to land; the assault, the robbery, the break-in, the accident, the flood, the fire; the sickness, the anxiety, the depression, the loneliness; the betrayal, the disappointment, and the heartbreak.
There are these moments in life where you change instantly.
In one moment, you’re the way you were, and in the next, you’re someone else. Like becoming a parent: you’re adding, of course, instead of subtracting, as it is when someone dies, and the tone of the occasion is obviously different, but the principle is the same. Birth is an inciting incident, a point of no return, that changes one’s circumstances forever. The second that beautiful baby onto whom you have projected all your hopes and dreams comes out of your body, you will never again do anything for yourself. It changes you suddenly and entirely.
Birth and death are the same in that way.
In 2014, there was birth. In 2015, there was death.
And in two years’ time, we’ve experienced both.
I’m no longer the person I was before The Tragedy. I’m becoming someone else. I’m becoming a person I don’t yet know.
36 A Month Before
January 2015
We threw Iris her first birthday party the day before her actual birthday. My in-laws flew in and lots of friends attended. It was a celebration-worthy occasion. Iris had made it nearly 365 days in the world, and we had made it nearly 365 days as her parents. Like any significant occasion of late, there was a part of me that was sad that Harris was absent.
The party was at this huge, indoor playland. I knew Iris wouldn’t remember any of it, but it was still a success, despite the fact that she refused to take one bite of her cake, much less smush any part of her body in it like babies
