my beautiful brother Chris died on February 21, 2012.
i blog here to stay sane. i howl to thee, internets.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Every morning
I wake up
You are my first or second or third thought and
I feel sorrow.
Because I miss you.
Because you never got the chance to be the man you were becoming.
Because you were beautiful because you were golden.
Because I don’t know where you are.
Because I would sacrifice everything I have to hear you voice one more time, see your smile, hug you.
My brother. My perfect beautiful brilliant golden baby brother.
I still hold out a shard of hope that you will find some way to come back home to us. How can we carry on when you are gone, my wild one?
If you were not dead I would buy you this pencil case.
No one says your name in public anymore.
New Game:
You still die, but you come back for a little while every spring. Similar to Jesus, but without that nasty crucifixion nonsense, and we won’t make a religion out of it.
messages
Yesterday:
Tell grief counsellor that though I’m not sure where my brother is now, his spirit was with me for awhile, though I feel that it has now moved on. “He’s just gone.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know, but I hope it’s somewhere nice.”
Today:
Purchase belated birthday present for our mom. Put wallet back in purse. Look on floor. Bright shiny dime sitting in the middle of the aisle all by itself.
Ok, kid. I hear you.
Nothing takes it away
Not coffee not alcohol
Not exercise not inertia
Not giving in to sorrow not pushing past it to activity
Not breathing not dreaming
Not hitting not yelling
Not shopping not fucking
Not medicating not crying
Not denial not distraction
Not keeping it in not letting it out
Not being a better person not giving in to base impulses
Not silence not screaming
& the decision to keep living despite the pain must be renegotiated Every. Single. Day.
Arbutus
If grief were given shape, if grief
were given shape it would grow like this
in a horror of limbs, and headless—
Abruptly up to gripped rock it
gives, groan on ingrained
groan, it
writhes, waterworn and weathering
the weather of its own wood
while the shelf of the world shivers.
No bark
is born so old. No bark is born
with blunt teeth bared and tearing red strips of itself
in such thin streaping curls of skin, no bark
but this, crackling under the smooth gnarl
of its own flensing. Windlorn, windflinted,
still like slow molasses wound on a stick
it pours the thick thrust of itself
hugely upward, anguished, arboreal
it seeks its brutal purchase, it sinks its rootmuscles in
and will not be moved, it will be
unmoved
as if grief as if grief as if
grief, engorged, grappled its roots below. No it has no
choice. It outstrips itself as it grows.
—Steven Price, “Arbutus.” Omens in the Year of the Ox. Brick Books, 2012. p. 37-8.
I really fucking miss you.
Dear Chris,
You were fuzzy in my dream last night, or the dream itself was fuzzy, but it was unmistakably you. I was Christmas shopping with mom in a mall, and was annoyed. By her, by everything. You kind of sidled up and said or did something to make me laugh. Just being your cute, goofy self. Conspiratorial, reading between the lines with me.
I woke up happy.
I know I can’t, won’t ever know, when it’s actually you, and when it’s me wanting it to be you. I guess I understand that this will be our relationship from now on. Glimpses and shadows of you, little remnants and pulses when I don’t expect it, or when I want to manifest it. As if my love could will your spirit from wherever it is and bring it next to me. I guess I have no choice but to accept this. I know it wasn’t your choice either.
I miss you so much, dude. The pain is unbearable, and yet I bear it. I’m ripped open from sternum to metatarsal, yet I keep standing. Will I see you again, or only in dreams?
And I don’t know what to do with myself now, with my life. What one big thing I need to do to make it matter; to make my life mean something; to make up for yours being cut short.
Love always,
Sister.
It was this night four years ago that I received a phone call from my dad telling me my little brother had died in an accident.
My life hasn’t been the same since.
I don’t know you, but I am sorry for your loss. It’s been nearly six months since my little brother died, and I think a large part of me died with him.
Grief Paradox
I do not want to go to sleep.
I also don’t want to wake up.
