It's nice to finally be able to find a little time to write. It's been a hectic few weeks. As of this past Monday, I am now 4 months pregnant. I had an appointment Friday morning. It was a long wait. I had my phone to keep me occupied, so I wouldn't have minded. Then I looked up...and there you were. A few years older but not much and with a beard. You had a baby girl on your lap, clearly your daughter. You talked with her and played with her. Then your wife sat down near you. A perfect little family. A swell of agony crashed against my psyche as I watched this you that wasn't you. I tried not to wonder how accurate this picture would have been. But there was no “would have been”. There couldn't be. Seeing you but not-you with a family tore me wide open. Fortunately, you got up just as the tears were promising to come. I saw then that you were too short to be you. I think it helped a little. I sat reeling for a few moments, then the world snapped back into focus just in time for my name to be called. I made it. That is, I made it until the trip home. We had one more stop. At the corner by the apartment complex, I saw you again. You were crossing the street. You were an old man. Surprisingly, I didn't tear up. I think it sent me too far from reality to let that happen.
We know now that there was no way you were going to live. There is no technology or medicine that could have possibly saved you. You were not meant to survive it...that part was left up to us. Surviving your death is an everyday thing, now. I'm not sure if that's a forever kind of thing but it's definitely still where I am. I keep forgetting that while a lot can happen in a year, it's not really a terribly long time. I'm doing so much better, but some days it still feels like it just happened. Some days, a lot of days, I feel like you are sending me messages. Was this another message or just a bizarre and painful coincidence? I'm not typically one to dwell on the alternate realities we don't get to see. You're dead. You were single and only 24 years old. You were and are my baby brother. You were never a husband, a father, a grandfather and you won't be...not in that body. Not in this life. It was not meant for you to spend any more time in it. Whether it's an act of genetics, some form of higher power or just coincidence, honestly makes no difference to me. It is what it is. It hurts, and that's that. The meaning behind the event is for me to find and decide. It is my meaning and no one else's. It belongs to me and I have chosen to own it. I own the pain, I own the lessons and I own the changes it has brought. But most of all, I own the gift. It's the gift that gives it meaning. None of the other things could exist without that part.
Thank you for that gift...my brother, my son. My gentle, sweet, funny giant.
You have captured so clearly the main lesson I have learned about grief, that it is an absolutely inviolate personal thing. You are my daughter and George was my son, but my feelings and experiences over his illness and death are as separate from yours as you are from me. It's what makes the journey so lonely, even as it brings us closer together. I, too, sometimes see a hefty young man and think it could be or, even worse, should be our Gingle.
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