9.17.25 (On Grief)

Fourteen years ago, today, my Dad died. It was so long ago that sometimes I don’t fully remember what it is like to be a daughter with a Dad. And really, I have no idea what it is like to be 48 and have one, so it is all the same, I guess. Eight years ago, today, my brother, who had spent the previous 24 hours in a coma, coded, died, and returned. He never woke up; but his return allowed him to die a few days later, for real, in an operating room, in the planned, orchestrated way that all organ donors die. 

I don’t really remember what it was like to be a sister, either. 

I can write these things without crying or getting angry. I can write them and then make a funny joke (I did always wish to be an only child! I often fantasized I was adopted!) and move on to whatever the day brings.  I feel like I should conjure up some really strong sobs or sit my kids down and do something in honor of the family they lost and barely knew. But, I don’t have the energy for anything like that. Maybe it is time that has drained it away or maybe it is these constantly, endlessly dramatic and verbose times that have zapped me of grief and empathy—even empathy for my own self and the people and things I am missing. 

I tried for so long to make sense of all this—the death, the orphan-ness, the abandonment, the absolute horror of being the angel of death twice for the men I loved most. But there isn’t any sense in death and tragedy. There are lessons and glimmers of wisdom, but there isn’t sense or logic or anything truly good in death. It is an end—and even though I believe in the life everlasting—it is the temporary life where I take my breaths, and they are no longer breathing. 

I spent years trying to put them back here. I’ve looked for signs and searched for clues. I’ve imagined the recipients of my brother’s organs a thousand times and looked for research studies using cadaver lungs. I’ve written science narratives in my head of the invisible string connecting my brother to a Nobel Prize in medicine. I’ve toyed in the dangerous world of what if—what if my Dad didn’t stop his heart meds, is there a chance, a tiny chance, he could have made it to Nicholas, who appeared 14 months after his death. 

But all of this is fiction, nonsense, lies, yarns, the work of an emotional conman living inside of my head. I’ve exhausted myself with it all. My Dad is dead. My brother is dead. They are somewhere and that somewhere is not here. They taught me things when they were alive. In death, they’ve forced me to try to remember them, instead of inventing a fictional version of them.  And even as I try to remember, I know I forget, because so much of a person is in there here-ness and presence. 

And they aren’t here. 

But I do remember a Dad who argued all the time, but never once allowed a beat to go without saying I love you. I remember a brother who had no words, but who told me so many stories—pulling me towards this and that, unfolding a plot and a twist with every gesture. I remember a father and son who adored one another—the father who took pride in making sure his son had a clean shave and the best education possible. And son, who ran away in anger, over and over again, when he realized his Dad no longer breathed, here. 

I remember missing them when I left for college and Vermont and marriage and motherhood. And I remember the very moment when I realized that missing was nothing like this missing, 14 and 8 years later.