No, you do *not* understand.

Trust me when I tell you, you just don't. The sentiment is wonderful, and kind and yes, it really does mean something., but do not tell me you understand how I feel. Because you don't. I know you don't -- how could you understand how I feel when I don't understand how I feel?

I thought it was going to be fine this year, I got up that morning, wished I could call him, did an emotional inventory and felt okay about it, sad but not bunny boiling sad/crazy. Then I went to lunch. I walked in, sat down, ate an entire meal, and just as we were finishing, I saw the mongolian barbecue chefs slinging vegetables and meat across the hot skillet/table and realized that if he were still alive I'd have been having mongolian barbecue with my brother that nigh to celebrate his 53rd birthday, like we did every year.

I suddenly felt all hot and nauseous, my throat got dry, my heart raced, tears formed and burned my eyes. I was mad. At myself, at my lunch date, at him for dying.

I sucked it up, went back to work, and at 10:15pm as I raised my sharpie marker to cross through the date on the calendar, like I do every other day, I lost it. How could I treat it like any other day? I spent 20 minutes on the floor in my bathroom crying until I vomited then I marked the day off and went to bed.

I believe you care, but no, you do not understand.

The ongoing dialogue

If you look for it, there is an abundance of advice out there in the world for someone who’s recently lost a loved one. I don’t remember intentionally looking for it or reading it, but I could probably recite it if someone asked. Things like, "don’t make any big life decisions for at least the first year after the loss".

In my case, I waited one exactly one year and started making plans to move. I heard that little snippet of advice in the back of my head every time I got closer to my goal of leaving Northern Virginia. I knew ‘a year’ was intended to be an average. I knew I was probably rushing things. I didn’t care. I couldn’t live there anymore. It was too much, being there without him. Driving past the Van Dorn Street exit on 95 made me cry, every time, so did 5 Guys, and 3 buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s. I knew I’d never be able to, or even want to sit in the bleachers at Hayfield High School and watch a football game again. So I ignored the voice and kept on keeping on.

Later, I saw a grief counselor who told me I should write Mark a letter; tell him all the things I was thinking and feeling – just “anything I wanted to say”.
I never did this.

I knew if I started, there’d be no end. There was nothing unfinished between Mark and me. I loved him and he knew it. He loved me and I knew it. There weren’t any harsh words, or ruffled feathers. This should be good news. In the case of the letter writing though, it’s not. How do you write a letter to someone who you told everything to? Even when you don’t want it to, your life keeps happening. You keep meeting people, and if you’re lucky, you make some new friends.
Things keep happening in the world, things you want to talk about. Books and movies keep coming out.

It’s the worst insult. Never having a conversation with him again. Never sitting across from him in the living room, with the fire burning behind me and the dogs sleeping on either of side of him, talking about crazy, brilliant, funny, troubled high school students, or broken animals made well again, or family strife, or exchanging Monica Lewinsky limericks.

A letter? Never mind not knowing where to start, there simply would be no end.

I ran from the ghosts to North Carolina, thinking it would be better, and it was. It is. It still is. I have new people here, a home that he should have seen, a new puppy, and these are things he would have loved.

That wasn’t the worst of it though. The worst of it was when I realized I was in love. In love with a man who makes me think I’ve never been loved before. A man I can’t believe I finally met and a man I would have been proud to take home to Mark.

His opinion was always the only one that mattered. Even when I knew it wouldn’t be a favorable opinion. I took them anyway. Often, their reaction to him was the beginning of the end of it with them. They didn’t know it, but I always did.

It feels petulant to say ‘it’s not fair’. It feels juvenile to scream it.
I want to do both and I probably will.

The dogs won’t tell.

I miss you Mark.

Arrowhead

I didn’t sleep well or much last night. Around 5 I fell asleep for about 30 minutes, and had the first dream about my brother since he died. Fully awake now, the pieces are still just pieces, but dreaming of him brought this memory back. This is not sunshine and flowers friends, so if that’s why you came, move along, nothing here to see.

The year before Mark died; he went to visit the home and now private museum of his favorite author, Herman Melville. Moby Dick was Mark’s favorite story, and his favorite book to teach to his students. Every year, he promised an ‘A’ to any student in the class who could find the part in the book where Melville switches from first person to third. I’d happily share that secret with you, but I wasn’t one of his ‘A’ students.

Sitting in my brother’s house just days after his death the discussion of what to do with Mark’s ashes was settled without discussion the second Steve Clicks suggested they be scattered at Melville’s home. Some things you know are right the instant you hear them. I don’t remember Steve saying anything else that week, but I remember this as clearly as I remember what happened yesterday. Looking at it now, it feels like this is why he was there that day.

My sister Julie made the arrangements, Arrowhead is a privately funded museum, and she explained to them who Mark was and what it would mean to us to leave him there. They couldn’t have been more generous, gracious or willing to help my family ease our suffering.

We went in June.
Early June in New England is only summer during the hours of noon and 3pm, before and after those hours, it’s late winter, or at least fall, with temps falling to 40 degrees and reminding me why I live in the South.

When my family visited, one of the curators met us 90 minutes before the official opening, offering a private tour of the house /museum and then leaving us to say our goodbyes privately and scatter his ashes in the field behind Melville’s home.

All I remember of the first floor is dark wood and fireplaces, but I dutifully climbed the stairs behind my remaining family feeling the weight of things I could not measure. As we all settled into the study around the tour guide I found myself staring at the floorboards, whispering to myself under my breath to look, to see that room the way he had seen it, just a year earlier.

I lifted my head, looked across the room to Melville’s carefully staged desk and out the window behind it, to Mt. Greylock, I felt my chest tighten, and suddenly, all the oxygen was gone from the room.

That view, that room. My brother.

I turned and fled the room, headed for the stairs we had just ascended. It got better when I got outside, to the fields surrounding the house. I tried to hear my friend Eileen’s voice in my head telling me when things got difficult to focus on my breathing. By the time my family reappeared, I had control.

I remember people reading passages from favorite books, and others with a few words to say as they scattered the remains of my brother into the wind on a hillside in New England. My mom cried while she talked about the joy Mark had given her. Mark’s best friend Bob held me as I cried, watching my mom, useless and helpless against either of our pain. I carried my youngest niece down the hill her legs wrapped around my waist; she wiped away my tears and said “He shouldn’t have died when he did.” Showing me that wisdom can come from anywhere, even sad seven year old nieces. Later that evening I would help that niece move caterpillars off the sidewalk in front of the restaurant we would eat dinner in. She couldn’t live with the fact that someone might step on them. So we moved them to the grass, one by one, for an hour and a half.
It made her feel better to have an ally, and helping her made me feel better.