June 19th is going to be amazing day for me. It's a day for me to celebrate Father's Day for my amazing husband, and it's my awesome bonus daughter's birthday. I want to just BASK in the glory of all that greatness on Sunday. It's going to be amazing.
So, I'm taking some space here - on June 15th - to talk about something else that June 19th means for me. In a separate space from Cameron's Father's Day, or Kassidy's 15th birthday.
You guys, this Sunday, June 19th, 2016 - marks FIVE YEARS since my brother passed on. I have lived through 4 of these annual anniversaries so far, but this one feels a little harder. For one, five years just seems like a milestone. We celebrate five years of employment, five years of marriage, five years of age - it's considered a memorable chunk of time. So when it's been five years since a death, you have that itch to mark five years as something significant, but it feels pretty lame.
And the big hitter, I have a distinct memory of being in a fight with my brother when I was around 6 or 7. I shouted at him that he was going to be sorry when I was older than him one day. He laughed at me, and said that he would always be older than me. I was crushed. I felt like I was doomed to be in 2nd place.
Well, how could we have known that I would outgrow him. You see, my brother was 5 years older than me. Born June 25, 1979. His last birthday was his 31st, in 2010. Days after his death, would have been his 32nd birthday.
You guys, my 32nd birthday is next month.
You guys, I am going to be older than my brother for the first time in my 32 years of life. It is as strange and disorienting to me as walking upside down on the ceiling. Each year my identity as Tom's sister slips further away. My brother being older than me, was the last firm stance I had on that identity. People have stopped associating me as his sister. He's not my kids' uncle. My youngest kids don't even know him. There whole lives have taken place in a world where my brother isn't.
And each year that passes gets stranger because of all those reasons, and 1000 more. It doesn't get easier, it gets different. There are less tears, but I still have a gut ache. I still have this undercurrent of unrest during this time. It's hard to talk to people about it, because the idea of imposing my emotions on others is painful. And I can plan out everything they will say to make me feel better, and I already know the answers. And I know the most important answer that most people are too polite to say: there is no happy ending. Most hard things we have to experience have some kind of resolution, or ending. Death is the exception. Just when you ache, and you're like: UGH, have I endured enough? Is it almost the end?? It's an instinct. At least it is for me. My brain searches for the hope that this yucky feeling will be gone soon, and this is the unsolvable problem.
Yes, yes - I understand that I'll see him in Heaven. That is so impossible to conceptualize. It gives me some amount of comfort, but it's not complete.
My brother and I didn't get along. I think of two things often though, and without a proper ending to this I'll just close with them.
First, when I brush my teeth and am brushing in the back, it tickles me and I laugh. Every time I brush my teeth. One day, when I was asking my brother if that was normal, he said, "No, that means you're retarded." It cracks me up.
Next, my brother and I were teenagers and having one of our horrific fights. Screaming, yelling, throwing things, slamming doors - we went AT IT. Well, I must have been winning that round because my brother snapped and screamed at me that he hated me, and wished I had never been born. It really hurt my feelings surprisingly; it was a lower blow than we usually took. I ran to my room like the epic teenager I was and started to cry. He came in a short time later and sat on my bed, it was a strangely intimate moment for us. We were always either ignoring each other or in some bitter war. He said, "We are not the same kind of people. We will fight, and probably will continue to generally dislike each other. But I love you." We hugged, and that was that. My Mom wasn't home, it was just this rare moment of peace and kindness.
If I could say something to my brother today I would say this:
It's nice to belong to you, as your sister. I'm glad I have you. Sorry I'm always such a shithead. Nerd.
