Pity Party

Today is a day where I would like nothing more than to lay around feeling sorry for myself and saying, "why me" to no one in particular. I don't want a dead brother. I want an alive brother who is going to be coming home from Afghanistan by the time the weather is nice out and who I can go visit and talk to on the phone and in person and share music with and fight with if I'm angry at him and laugh with him about a stupid joke and cry with him if I'm sad or just sit in silence with him because sometimes that's okay, too. I want to yell at someone that none of this is fair. That Shane was a good person and didn't deserve to die. That I just want my brother back. I want someone to tell me that the joke is over and Shane can come out now and be alive and I won't even get sore about the past three months being awful if I can just please have my brother back. So if that could just happen soon I'd really appreciate it.

I wish that Shane was just some kid I knew and not my brother so that all of this didn't hurt so badly. So that I could just move on. But there really isn't ever going to be any moving on. There will be adjusting and there will be a point where I can drive in the car by myself without crying, yes, but there won't ever be moving on because I don't get another brother. I can get a boyfriend or a husband or a guy friend or a son but I can never get another brother.

And now I just feel selfish for all of the things that I think and feel right now and I know that all of this is normal or is probably normal because I don't read any books about this sort of thing. But I just want a break from it.

Don't Be Afraid of a Date on a Calendar

It’s just another day, I tell myself. And in reality, that’s all any day is. Just another 24 hours in a long series of days that eventually turn into weeks, months, years, decades, lives.

But you know it’s more than just a day. Right. Three months ago, Shane’s live abruptly ended. Although I could imagine the possibility of Shane dying (he was, after all, in an active warzone where his company was actively fired upon multiple times a day), I never could have imagined the aftermath of death. It’s awful. The dead get to die. The living are expected to keep on, well, living. Shane is hopefully in heaven or experiencing some sort of peaceful afterlife existence. Maybe he was reincarnated and is getting ready to start a new life as human or a dog or a bumblebee. My mom did always say that Shane had a very old soul so it wouldn’t really surprise me if whomever is in charge up there decided to give his one more go in a new form. Wherever he is, hopefully it’s better. But the rest of us are still here. So what do we do?

Me, I’ve begun to be afraid of dates on a calendar. The 6th of December was difficult and painful. Shane’s death was still very fresh. But the 6th of January passed without incident for me and I was really proud of that. So I thought that would become a trend – that every 6th would be nothing more than a date on a calendar for me. Instead, I’ve been dreading this 6th for the past few days and I don’t know why.

Maybe it’s just the time of year and the weather. At this moment, everything seems perpetually gloomy and like the world will remained covered in snow and ice and cold for rest of eternity. Maybe it’s that this is the three-month marker. Maybe it’s just because I was taken out of my grieving process for that second month anniversary and I’ve finally settled back into things. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that it’s here. I had nightmares all night and woke up abruptly at 6:22. Everyone else is asleep. I’m alone at the moment, sitting in the dark chill of the morning, unsure of whether I even have the energy to cry about things.

Today, I will get out of bed. I will shower. I will assemble an outfit. I will go out into the world and at least fake functionality. I will remember my brother. And today, I will try to not let the hole in my heart consume me.

"It's All Right to Cry. Crying Gets the Sad out of You."

I often find myself wondering whether I'm where I'm supposed to be on the grief scale. Am I grieving enough? Too much? Was I laughing too much the other day? Is it okay that I still cry in the car every day? It's tough to say. I haven't read any literature on grief and I don't really talk to people about my it except for those closest to me. And everyone says basically the same thing -- that grief is a very personal journey and it's never the same for any two people. 

There are days that are more difficult than others. Yesterday I woke up feeling melancholy and could not figure out why. The not being able to figure out why occurs rather often. I will have a sense of sadness or start crying and I'm not quite sure why. I almost have to remind myself that maybe I feel blue because I'm grieving the loss of Shane. I think the reason behind this is that I don't want to admit to myself that I'm still being sad. 

If I know anything about my brother, it would be that he would not want the people he loved to sit around mourning him. He would want to be remembered, absolutely, but he would also want us to carry on with our lives. To find happiness, to find love, to live our lives. I try to remember that when I start feeling a sense of grief overcome me. I allow myself to feel anger or pain or fear or sadness or loss. But then I move on with my day. Shane is always with me, in my heart. But I don't allow the sadness that his death created to overshadow my life. Because if I were to do that, it would just consume me and I would be trapped in the Nothing. 


The people who told me at the funeral home that this will never go away were right. I was talking to Shane in the car about that the other day, a place where I often find myself having conversations with the air. How those people really knew what they were talking about. It never stops hurting. It will never go away. There will always be a hole in my heart that cannot be filled. And I would even say that it doesn't ever get easier, it just gets "different." 


Shane isn't someone capable of being replaced for anyone whose life he touched. And for me, he isn't someone capable of being moved on from. He was my only brother and I will never get another one. Sometimes I wish that I had other siblings so that the loss of Shane could be cushioned by having other brothers or sisters to lean on. But most of the time, I'm content with having had 23 years with one amazing little brother. 


So I guess for now, it's alright to continue crying in the car. Maybe one day I'll be able to take a car ride by myself and not feel the familiar wet sting on my face of tears. But that day probably won't be today. And it probably won't be tomorrow.

Edible Arrangements

 After Shane died, my parents and my best friend and I were gathered at home, preparing for a day at the funeral home or maybe one of the days right before the funeral home. Everyone was in pajamas, if I remember correctly, except for my best friend, who was put together and making sure that we were at least semi-functioning. There was a knock at the door. My best friend appeared to go answer the door and then came into the room where I was, muttering something slightly undiscernible and suggesting that I needed to go answer the door. 


At the door was a man with the widest smile I've possibly ever seen. He was wearing orange and purple and holding and obscenely large bouquet of fruit. So large that he was struggling to keep it upright. 


"HELLO!"


I stared back in disbelief. What was this strange little man doing at the door? What was this bouquet of fruit? Why was he so happy? Would I ever be that happy again? Was I ever that happy to begin with? Probably not. Could I even fake being that happy? Probably not successfully. Seriously, was this man on medication? Did he have a head injury? These are the thoughts that flew through my head as I stared at the man, unable to form proper words. 


Finally, I answered, "How can I help you?"

"Well, I have an Edible Arrangement for you! And boy, is this one special because it even has special chocolate sauce! And I've never gotten to deliver one with special chocolate sauce before! So this must be a very special delivery! Now, if you can just take this, I need to run back to the car so that I can get a little signature from you and give you one of our wonderful calendars!"

The man somehow placed the Edible Arrangement into my arms and, in the memory I've kept of the moment, skipped off to his delivery van to get a calendar and something for me to sign with a "little signature." 


I must have managed to hand off the arrangement to someone else, collect the special chocolate sauce and calendar from the man, and give him a little signature. He was smiling the entire time. Couldn't he see our misery, I thought to myself. Didn't he read the card? 


"Have a great day!!" The man trotted back to his van and drove out of our lives. 


I turned around to face my family and friends. And something magical happened. We all started laughing. Real laughter. Not forced, conversational laughter. But real, honest, doesn't-make-you-sound-attractive laughter that comes from deep down in your belly. 


That moment proved for me that life does, in fact, go on. Sometimes it starts to go on during a time when we least expect, like when you're minding your own business, attempting to be miserable and grieve in your pajamas. Life forces you to have moments of happiness and laughter, even if it then thrusts you into four miserable days of funeral homes and funerals and burials.


I don't remember who sent the Edible Arrangement, I think it was a friend of my mother's. It was excessively large and took a long time to disassemble but it gave us fresh fruit to eat. And it gave us laughter. Throughout the rest of that week, we kept seeing Edible Arrangements trucks and making jokes about special chocolate sauce and happy deliverymen. To whomever sent that, I don't think anything else my family was given during that time frame brought us more genuine happiness during a time of absolute misery, so thank you very much. 


Not so long ago, I saw that deliveryman again and took the opportunity to thank him. I don't think he remembered me, but when I told him that we still talk about how happy of a person he was and how he brought my family so much joy with our Edible Arrangement he smiled wider than I thought possible, even for him. 

"Later Doesn't Always Come"

This is a playlist off of Shane's ipod, entitled "Later Doesn't Always Come." 

Starlight - Muse
Wildcat - Ratatat

Velvet - The Big Pink
Death is Certain Pt. 2 (It Hurts) - Royce da 5'9"
Ain't Nothing Like You - BlakRoc
When the Lights Go Out - The Black Keys

Click "Read More" to see the rest of the playlist. 

The Dead Can't Testify

I've always preferred to know things rather than not know things. At Christmas time, I searched the house until I found the presents. I hate surprises. I don't like having secrets kept from me. And I abhor liars. Mostly, I like the truth and I like knowledge. Facts are comforting.

So when the opportunity arises to learn, do I always take it? I thought I would have answered this question in the affirmative, but in actuality, it's in the negative. 

I'm referring to going through Shane's belongings. His laptop and his phone are sitting directly across from me. But every time I pick either one of them up, I feel like a snoop. Like I'm doing something wrong and am about to get punished. It's different than the feeling one gets when actually snooping and might get caught. This time, there's no one here to get upset. I know that, as much as I want him to, Shane just isn't going to walk into the room and catch me on his phone, asking me what the hell I'm doing and to get out of there. 

Two days ago, I opened the laptop. There are no documents. The few pictures that the Army didn't wipe off of his hard drive are mostly joke photos taken from failblog. They give me a laugh but make me sad all at the same time because I remember Shane sending most of them to me before and laughing about them with him. Now I'm laughing by myself. 

Yesterday, I turned on his phone. I didn't look through the pictures. I have no desire to read his text messages or his emails. Those are and will forever be private and none of my business. But I feel like if I delete anything, it's like I'm deleting a part of Shane. So I took his phone with me to school yesterday. I played one of his playlists entitled "Time to Die." It was mostly overly aggressive music, the majority of which I skipped because it started to make me feel angry. I kept his phone in my front pocket for the rest of the day. Throughout class, I would reach into my pocket and touch the phone, just to make sure that it hadn't somehow disappeared. And now it's sitting in front of me. 


Being surrounded by relics of the dead is both disturbing and comforting. Leaving Shane's belongings around has the potential to make everything feel like some sort of creepy museum to his existence. Knowing that he cannot come to collect his things, it becomes clear that we keep everything out for ourselves, as if we need a reminder about Shane. I know that my parents and I don't need to be surrounded by Shane's things -- we don't run the risk of suddenly forgetting about him and we have 23 years of memories in our hearts. But what if we start to put him away? What if we tuck him into drawers and pack him away in boxes? What happens then? Do the memories start to fade? Will he start to forget about us, where ever he is? Will we start to move on? Probably not. But there's a fear that these things will happen.


I remember a conversation I had with Shane before he deployed. I don't know if he talked about the possibility of his death with my parents, I have a feeling that he didn't, but it was always a part of our conversation. I was always open to the possibility that Shane wouldn't come home. I started mourning his death the day he deployed. Maybe that sounds tragic, and as much as I was still blindsided by his death, preparing myself for the possibility of such a thing has helped me. When he would bring up the topic, I mostly struggled to not cry in front of Shane or show any sign of weakness. I did not know what he was feeling, but I could imagine that keeping thoughts of one's possibly impeding demise all bottled up wasn't healthy -- that it was scary and uncertain. 

During one particular conversation, Shane said, "Bethie, if I die, I need you to promise me something."


Oh, dear God, I thought. What on earth is he going to ask me to do. "What's that," I asked. 


"I need you to promise that if I die, you won't keep my Army medals in a box somewhere. Put them out so that people can see them, or just throw them away. Because I don't want that stuff to just be in a box where no one ever sees them. I want people to remember me and what I did, okay?"


"Okay, buddy. I promise." 


Shane's actual medals just came back to us, and my parents and I have yet to decide what we're going to do with them. But a copy of his medals currently reside at my father's store in a display case for everyone to see, along with pictures of him. I hope that Shane would be happy with this. 


That's the tricky thing about the dead. As much as they can tell us their wishes while they're living, after they're gone, we're on our own. I can't call Shane and ask him if how his medals are displayed is to his liking. We just have to hope that we're honoring him in the way he would have liked.

Drop the World

Today "I got ice in my veins, blood in my eyes, hate in my heart, love in my mind. I see nights full of pain, days of the same. You keep the sunshine, save me the rain."  


Shane really liked this song. I listen to it when I'm feeling weak, which is fairly often these days, and it makes me feel a little closer to him and a little bit better. So buddy, if you can hear this, it's for you. 
 

Struggling

It’s been very difficult for me to write lately. Every time I sit down to formulate some words into sentences, my mind seems to falter and the page remains blank.

I’ve been having a rough time lately. I think it’s because the fact that Shane isn’t coming back is starting to become real.

When I check Facebook, I see status updates about when other soldiers are coming home on leave or coming home from deployment, and they break my heart. “_____ will be home for good in 2 months!” “Picking up ____ from the airport tomorrow morning!” They’re wonderful things to be able to share. Much better than most of the dribble on Facebook (“insert overly descriptive recent medical problem here;” “insert mundane task there”). And a part of me is really and truly happy that someone is getting to come home. But there’s another part of my heart that absolutely breaks when I read things like that. Because my someone will never be coming home on leave. He will never be coming back after a deployment. He will never be leaving for a deployment, either, for that matter. There are a billion things that Shane will simply never do again. And that’s a really difficult fact to wrap my head around.

I know that it’s going to be a bittersweet time in my life when Shane’s platoon comes home from their deployment. On the one hand, I can’t wait to meet some of the men who have become like family to me. But on the other hand, I know that my brother should be among them when they return. And it will be devastating when he doesn’t return.

Wasn’t Shane a good enough soldier? Wasn’t he a good enough person? Yes, and yes. But unfortunately, how good someone is does not determine whether they live or die. Maybe that sort of stuff matters for the afterlife, but it doesn’t really seem to matter in the here and now. Shane is dead and the world is still brimming with terrible people who get to walk around and live their terrible lives without a second thought.

“No one ever said that life was fair,” is something that I grew up hearing. It was mostly in reference to me not getting what I wanted. I never paid much attention to the phrase then, but I do now. Things really aren’t fair. So then what’s the point? If you’re a hard worker, if you have a good character, if you have a clean conscience and your heart is in the right place, what does all of that get you if life can get taken away in but a mere moment? I don’t really have an answer to my question and I don’t think anyone else could give me a satisfactory answer, either at the moment. Mostly because I’m convinced that there isn’t one. And for the time being, that is fine.

I keep waking up every morning. I keep getting out of bed and showering and I’ve even started going to my classes and interacting with other human beings besides my parents and sometimes I catch myself having little moments where I’m happy. They never last long, sometimes less than a second. But they’re there. Yesterday I spoke with a dear friend on the phone and I laughed. We both did. I don’t remember about what, but I remember my stomach hurting because I had laughed with my entire body. At another point in the day, I received hugs from two of my other friends and remembered that people really care about me, which I sometimes forget, and I felt the love they had for me in their hearts and I hoped that my heart was giving off the same love for them.

And maybe those little moments are the point. I know that for some people who are lucky enough to have a happy disposition, those little moments might be long stretches of time in their lives. But for people like me, happiness isn’t a constant. Rather, it sneaks into my heart in quiet little moments when I’m not looking or expecting. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to have two of those little moments. Maybe I won’t have any today. But I’m going to stick those moments in my metaphorical pocket and hold onto them today, just in case I find myself asking what the point of everything is.

One Tough Week

To be honest, last week was not easy. As I walked out of the house on Monday morning in the darkness of the early hours, my eyes turned upward in search of that special star. I couldn’t find it because the clouds were blanketing the sky.

So, off to school I went (papers still waiting to be read and graded) – really not sure if I was truly ready to be back. Again, the questions kept coming into my head – is it too soon, can I really do this, am I strong enough, am I being the best teacher I know how to be?

Once inside my building I hoped I had made the correct decision and then my kids (and former kids) came in, hour after hour, and in my heart, I knew I had made the best decision.  You see, my students are never my students, they are always my kids.  I have a passion for my subject matter, and I believe that passion will win.

Later I walk out of the building, again in darkness, and head off to return an item I purchased.  To be honest – it was one heck of an ugly sweater, which I purchased in September.  As I pass by a rack of clothing a top catches my eye. It looks like “Beth,” so I stop and find the correct size.  Someone calls my name and tells me she is so sorry for my loss.  Then with tears filling her eyes she tells me how she tried coming to the funeral home or funeral Mass, but couldn’t because all she could think of – what if that was one of her kids in the casket.  And with that my heart stopped for a moment. What if? My jaw clenched and I just stared – and then I asked how her children were doing.  And then she proceeded to tell me. Finally, I said I was weary, that I left my house twelve hours ago, and needed to get home. Yes, get home to my family, yes, go home to Kurt and Beth (and the Lola).

I called my dearest friend and vented to her.  I thought I was over this, but all week it hung in the back of my mind just as that ugly sweater hung in my closet.

It wasn’t until Saturday night as Beth and I were talking – she under the freshly washed comforter and I on top, that I decided to share the story with her.  Instead, this time I laughed and said – I believe that is now the number one thing not to say to someone.  And we both laughed.

And then it made me think of Shane and how he could turn someone’s comments into a bit of laughter.  So, thank you Shane for another one of your gifts as I continue to put, “one foot in front of the other.”

Peace and Love,

Always and Forever,

Shane’s Mammy and Beth’s Momma

"Reach Out and Touch Faith"