cosmolinguist | Entries tagged with chris

I'm proud of my dad, who didn't exactly express an emotion tonight but admitted to previously having had an uncomfortable one.

He was telling me about some event at my mom's church that featured music from Gavin and Ellen and Eva and maybe someone else, I can't remember...anyway, these are all people I remember from school because they're only a couple years younger than me. They are, as my dad pointed out, all from my brother's grade. "Why couldn't he be there to watch it too?" Dad said. I muttered rueful agreement and we all sat in the silence with that feeling for a little bit.

I'm proud of my mom too, who said "I never knew back then that Adam was gay." I didn't even know where to start with that. She reminded me that Adam is the same age as the kid she was a support worker for; she followed that kid all through from preschool to high school so she got to know all the students in that year pretty well; they were basically her coworkers every day for like 15 years. And one of them is this Adam.

I am dying to know how she's so sure now that Adam is gay but she didn't explain, just saying "It was so obvious." (Did he just say "my husband" or "my boyfriend"? Did he have a lisp and a limp wrist? What would be obvious as gay to my mom??) But she didn't report his gayness in a complainy way, much less like it's a tragedy, like she's telling me someone has inoperable cancer, so this is a vast improvement on the past. And she added "He was really nice, though," and reported on a nice ordinary conversation they'd had about his job. It's such a big deal for my mom to say a person can be gay yet also nice. And to have a normal conversation with them and report it as such.

First thing in the morning, D and I went to the "design consultation" for our phodography from the other week.

Design consultation is the fancy name they give to "we'll actually let you see the photos." I tried hard to get them to do it over Zoom or something so we could all participate because I didn't think MB would be up to another trip and we ended up taking advantage of a cancellation that was so early she wasn't able to get out of bed yet. But they absolutely refused, they're like "oh the experience is part of it..." and I'm like stares in blind but whatever. So D drove us to this random place again and we sat in a room with a big projector and a sofa and cups of tea and watched a slideshow of photos of us and our dog, with the kind of sentimental piano music I associate with these kinds of photo slideshows at funerals. So that was odd, but made me all the happier Gary is still with us.

The photos were, of course, great because Gary is so photogenic he has his own international fan club on social media. And it was lovely to see not just him but all three of us -- individually with him and then all together -- as well.

I'm exactly the kind of mark that people who do dog photography should be on the lookout for: I have an adorable dog, he's old and he nearly died and I'm extremely sentimental about him, and I finally in middle age have the disposable income to spend a silly amount of it on photos of us and our dog. But it wouldn't be a family portrait without him, and when else would we get such a thing?

This was such a part of my upbringing -- I have the most recent one of my parents in my bedroom, a few feet away as I type this -- and I haven't been part of one since the last one we did before my brother died so that was either 19 or 20 years ago. I have a copy of the family photo from that too but I don't have it out.

( my mom being my mom )

Anyway I haven't set foot in a professional photo studio since and I never missed it. If it wasn't for Gary and this silly thing I won on Facebook, I probably never would have again because I didn't want to, I don't have any good associations with it.

But this has made me extra glad to have had this chance to be with my other family, Gary the Wonder Dog and the humans barakta started calling the WonderHouse. So of course I spent ridiculous money on the fancy photos. I'm so happy we're here.

Normally this day looms over me more but this year, with one thing and another, it was only when I needed to know the date for a work thing yesterday that I realized today should have been Chris's 40th birthday.

And that means, in just under two weeks, I'll be twice the age that he ever reached.

I've had a really normal day.

And I wouldn't have expected that on the day when my brother's death turns 18, enough time having passed for the lack of a person to be a fully-grown person itself. I might not have expected that when it's the first year -- only the second week or so! -- that my parents no longer own the house he lived in all his life.

But I think what I said a few days ago holds true:

"November is bad for me every year and it turns out that a good way to deal with being reminded of an old bad thing is to have a new bad thing happen!"

Even more than that, what I said two years ago holds true:

Because for all I can feel that this day sucks, I also feel like I have a better infrastructure. Yesterday I posted a photo on Facebook of Gary and I watching that Bruce Springsteen thing and nobody commented on that but several people wanted to tell me how much they liked the room: the plants, the curtains, the dog-management system, how cozy it looked. And it is! It's so great! I know these two share a desire to make their homes welcoming to guests or waifs and strays, and having felt like both over a handful of places they've lived I can attest that they've always been successful in that.

And those things, the twinkly lights and nice curtains and plants everywhere and all of that, are just the physical manifestation of the logistical and emotional infrastructure I feel like I am benefiting from so much now. Because while Andrew was always incredibly (almost too intensely) kind and thoughtful and patient and indulgent towards me this time of year and this day especially, my life with him lacked these underpinnings. It's not that I need the middle-class accoutrements to feel good, just that external chaos mirrored internal chaos. My memories feel cold and dark because I was often actually cold. I felt adrift and that's a tough thing to feel in such a lonely situation as to be your parents' only living child after an experience that few people have now had by their early 20s.

I spent some time this morning looking at the photos I posted here soon after he died, carefully scanned in and blessedly still with me thanks to the internet. I told my social media friends about that post and people have said kind things but I don't have anything I need to say or anything I need to hear. I just like the idea of people looking at the photos and knowing something about my brother.

Holy shit, I was excited about the latest episode of You're Wrong About because well I'm always excited, it's a top-tier podcast for me. And I saw this episode is about the Dyatlov Pass incident, which is a story I've long gravitated to (well, it feels "long" but I probably first heard about it on Cracked too, or something of that vintage and genre). And then when I finally got around to listening to this episode when I went to work today I was like "oh it's that Blair!" because I'd forgotten her last name but even I with no Twitter remembered her first name in association with all the Iditarod stuff. So I was really excited then.

And it was even better than all of that led me to believe.

It is probably already, and I've just finished it, my favorite retelling of this story. Because I'm used to these renditions being very big on gruesome details of how the bodies were found and elaborate fantastical theories of what might have happened to them. This was very different. Despite Sarah warning us that it'd include details of dead bodies, it didn't have that many and it did treat them gently.

Most of all, it treated these people as people: the first thing Sarah did was read out their names and ages. I knew they were young but hearing numbers in the low twenties over and over again made me think of course of my brother who died two weeks short of 22.

This podcast goes so much further than a litany of names and ages such as you'd hear at any memorial vigil. Everything about how these people were described cemented the idea that they were all good at hiking in the winter (which I also knew) but also that they cared about each other and they did a good job looking after each other. Which isn't usually how this story is told. Usually their competence is just a necessary prerequisite for the theories about what happened to them to be as outlandish as possible -- for something to get even such experienced and skilled hikers as these, the stories go, it must have been a secret Soviet military conspiracy/aliens/yeti/whatever. Usually their lives are a footnote in the puzzle of their deaths. I think most of the versions of this story I've heard so far have been shared by men, and dere I say this feels like a very masculine way of telling the story: their lives secondary to the interesting puzzle of their deaths.

Sarah and Blair do consider aliens and yeti and all the rest of the usual theories, but they consider them just for their likelihood but also what appeal they might have for people, what comfort do they bring to those who hear the stories. The incident is treated like a modern folk tale, which really is what it has become (and why I've always been drawn to it, grisly death has never appealed to me), so they look at what it tells us. So not just "is it more likely that animals ate some soft tissue of the face of one person after they were dead or that those bits were removed in torture before a mysterious murder," but "is it actually more comforting to think that nature did this, without malice or cruelty, than that humans did it with those things?" Is it more likely that the radiation on their clothes came from thorium in their camping lantern than that it came from secret nuclear tests, is it worse to live in a world of Cold War deception or one where dangerous elements were routinely used in consumer products?

They talked too about how people did in response to this story that thing people always do, where they try to reassure themselves that any similar horrible thing couldn't happen to them: they go looking for mistakes these people made so they can tell everyone they'd never do that. But it doesn't seem like these hikers likely did anything wrong.

( This bit is sort of more about finding meaning in death in general, I think it's comforting but that might seem weird to other people. )

The podcast also mentions someone who watched the funerals of these hikers when he was 12, went on to the school they went to, joined the sports club they were in, and gave tours to the Dyatlov Pass area until he was in his 70s. I wonder how many people there are around now who remember the hikers as people. They died in 1959. I wonder, with the dwindling numbers of those people and a new theory (thanks in part to Frozen 2!) that is as Sarah says extremely simple, if this folk tale will be allowed to morph into a new form: into something respectful of humanity and aware of the role this story can play in bringing people together rather than pitting humans against each other (or against yetis or aliens). I hope that can happen.

I had grand plans to do a lot with my day off but then I spent much of it reading a book (I have no memory of how We are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby ended up on my library reading list, but I'm really enjoying it!) and trying not to fall asleep in the armchair.

I did eventually help

mother_bones getting the garden ready for winter: we re-potted the grape plant, cut back the dead stuff on the strawberry plants, covered things with straw mulch like tucking them in for the winter. She asked me to get a couple of bags of compost, mindful that the garden center at the end of the road will close for the winter in another week or two, and when I got there Brenda said "we don't have any left! we close next week!" But after a while she seemed to recognize me because she asked if it was for

mother_bones, and when I said it was (I'd have said that at first if I'd known it needed to be said!) she said "well she can have a bag." And when Brenda had unearthed her personal stash from all the buckets it was behind and the table it was under in the greenhouse, she determined she had enough to give us two after all.

mother_bones was genuinely touched when I recounted all this as I brought the compost home.

We made dinner together too: after the veg box brought us yet more potatoes and reminded me that we have a million potatoes now because I never remember to make them for dinner, we had Sheet Pan Dinner: roasting some of them, halloumi, red spring onion, and rosemary. Along with salad also full of veg box stuff: cos lettuce, mixed leaves, yellow pepper, cherry tomatoes, pomegranate seeds, and a mixture of regular seeds.

The rosemary was brought for our party last weekend, along with some nice gin and tonic. We had more of the nice gin, and nice tonic, this evening; I had for the first time people to share the toast with that I traditionally do for my brother's birthday. He should have been thirty-eight today.

A friend messaged me this morning to say she was thinking of me today. If I hadn't just looked at my FB memories I would've been confused by this. I'd managed not to notice, however briefly, the date. I thanked her and mused about how much better I felt than I usually do on this date. It surprised me and I didn't have an explanation for it. Maybe it'd make more sense after I had my coffee, I thought at the time. But I still don't think I totally have a handle on it.

"So today," I said to

mother_bones in an early break in conversation this morning, "is sixteen years since my brother died. And..." I had wanted to say that but I didn't know what I was going to say next. I'd just said the "and" out of my nervous-talking tendency really, just to fill up the space. "I feel okay, actually," I finished.

It kind of surprised me to hear myself say that. I did my best to check in with myself, whether I was just saying that because I always try to be okay or pretend I'm okay. But as far as I can tell -- which might not be very far -- I was. My legs were sore, as if days' worth of delayed-onset-muscle-soreness had turned up all at once. I was glad I had a meeting later instead of work. I was disappointed that the sky was overcast after the brighter few days we'd had lately. I'd dragged myself out of bed relatively early to let Gary out and I'd done my morning chores and fixed myself granola with blueberries for breakfast. I did in fact feel pretty okay!

"And I think that's because of you and

diffrentcolours," i told her. Because for all I can feel that this day sucks, I also feel like I have a better infrastructure. Yesterday I posted a photo on Facebook of Gary and I watching that Bruce Springsteen thing and nobody commented on that but several people wanted to tell me how much they liked the room: the plants, the curtains, the dog-management system, how cozy it looked. And it is! It's so great! I know these two share a desire to make their homes welcoming to guests or waifs and strays, and having felt like both over a handful of places they've lived I can attest that they've always been successful in that.

And those things, the twinkly lights and nice curtains and plants everywhere and all of that, are just the physical manifestation of the logistical and emotional infrastructure I feel like I am benefiting from so much now. Because while Andrew was always incredibly (almost too intensely) kind and thoughtful and patient and indulgent towards me this time of year and this day especially, my life with him lacked these underpinnings. It's not that I need the middle-class accouterments to feel good, just that external chaos mirrored internal chaos. My memories feel cold and dark because I was often actually cold. I felt adrift and that's a tough thing to feel in such a lonely situation as to be your parents' only living child after an experience that few people have now had by their early 20s.

When I tried to explain this to Stuart on the phone this evening (he's taken to calling me for a few minutes almost every evening, it's replacing the kind of chat I'd have with most other people in text through the day but it's so nice to hear his voice), he said maybe it helped to have put some distance between myself and something that had been so connected to the situation. Because it was; I can't think of the funeral without thinking of the wedding, less than two months later.

Tonight

diffrentcolours very sweetly offered me extra cuddles tonight and asked if there was anything they could do for me today but I couldn't think of anything. I wouldn't disrupt the routine of where he sleeps for such a normal day as this. I realized I didn't need anything special today, because they had both already done so much before today.

"I only made chicken and sweet potato fries for dinner, not very inspiring but I'm feeling rubbish," I told

mother_bones and she said "Darling. It's fine. I'm amazed you managed anything at all." I looked at her confused: why would she be, I hadn't even told her about my headache! Then I realized that she didn't think that's what I meant about feeling rubbish. But that's all it was. Just normal stuff that could happen any day of the year.

I spent some time this morning looking at the photos I posted here soon after he died, carefully scanned in and blessedly still with me thanks to the internet. I told my social media friends about that post and people have said kind things but I don't have anything I need to say or anything I need to hear. I just like the idea of people looking at the photos and knowing something about my brother.

I realized this morning, in the quiet house and the wee hours of "haven't had enough sleep," that I don't think there's anything that can as vividly, as reflexively, call to mind the voices of my parents and the laughter of my brother, the textures and sights and sounds of my parents' living room, as effectively as this one stupid comedy movie from the 80s.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation has always been my parents' holiday go-to. It doesn't quite seem their sense of humor, well not my mom's anyway, and I don't know how it got to be this way, I just remember watching it all the time. I definitely started when my sheltered childhood still left me innocent enough to be baffled at the sexual jokes and utterly ignorant of what some of the swear words meant.

But because we always watched it, every year, and because my parents are such creatures of habit, I know just which punchlines my dad will say before they get said on screen, I know just which logistical plot holes my mom will poke at, saying "that would never really happen like that!" to a movie where nothing that happens is at all plausible because that's not the point. I know which slapstick moments my brother would giggle at and rewind the well-worn VHS copy to play over and over.

I had to get myself a DVD copy when I went to college. I'd still see them all after finals for Christmas of course, but Christmas Vacation-watching isn't a Christmas activity. It's an advent activity actually: something done as part of the preparation, the old incarnations repeated again. I've left it pretty late this year actually, but I didn't want to miss it entirely.

Since I had to get my own copy, I've always worried maybe it'll be too bitter along with the sweetness, too much a reminder of how alone I am when I watch this damn silly bigoted 80s movie, because I'm really sensitive to that kind of bittersweetness. But somehow it never has been too much, it's always only ever been good for me, a surprisingly uncomplicated connection I was glad to renew in this year where nothing else Christmas-y is happening as it always had done before.

Yesterday my friend Kat shared this poem, which someone else shared after they noted the death of this poet, "better known for blowing bubbles all around town."

( My Own Epitaph, Which I Better Write Because I Know Too Many Poets )

It reminds me so much of my brother (appropriate perhaps since today should have been his birthday) because for the first ten years my mom would put a tiny poem in the paper every year on the anniversary. Sometimes she'd write it and sometimes she'd ask me to. Hers were absolutely heartfelt but consisted of completely generic nice things. I wrote about the time he fell out of a tree playing paintball and how he made tuna hotdish for himself in the middle of the night. There's nothing wrong with my mom's best efforts, but I did my best to remember his specific self, it was really important to for me to try.

I still remember him when I'm thinking about video games or hearing a song from one of those 90s boy bands he pretended not to like as much as he did. He'd have hated for his deeply uncool sibling to know too much about him, so I'm sure I'm remembering him very imperfectly and in broad strokes, but I do my best.

Today is 15 years since my brother died.

It is a testament to what a tough year 2020 has been that this normally dreaded day in a dreaded month has barely felt like a blip. Not because I'm handling it particularly well, just that I'm handling everything else as badly as I normally only expect to in November, the month where the cold and dark first sink their teeth in, the month for the dead.

I was surprised I didn't see more entries written about the continuing loss of my brother in this plague year. The early days of lockdown (the "first," in some ways, but it's been constant for me since then so this isn't "a second lockdown" but "still lockdown") the feeling of having my life pulled out from under me, of not knowing what was going to happen, of being scared of how I'll cope with it, is the only time since he died that I've felt that profoundly mentally and emotionally awful.

Maybe that's why, less than a month into lockdown, I started to have the dreams again about him still being alive, something I hadn't done for years (I read that the pandemic gave a lot of us weird dreams). Some of them seem fine while I'm dreaming because we're doing mundane things -- I remember one where we were at my aunt's for Christmas and she asked him to grab another bottle of wine out of the fridge, and I woke up with this image, more vivid than many of my memories even though it's of something that never happened -- but at least one was distressing at the time, in the dream, because I was specifically comforted by my brother's presence since we were with my dad and he'd started acting weird like he'd had a stroke or was acquiring dementia or something. Another vivid image I still have is thinking I'm glad he's here to talk to, I'm glad I don't have to deal with Dad on my own.

And maybe because of all the dreams, all this feels extra...present this year. Silly little things like surveys asking me about my relationships with different people (like for a language survey what language I speak with different groups, or for an LGBT+ survey whether different groups of people in my life know about my sexuality or gender) are bothering me more than they used to when I get to the question about siblings: to answer as if I have them is incorrect, but so is answering them as if I don't. I'm thinking so much about what I'm missing as my first Christmas without my family looms. I woke up this morning missing not just my brother but people who knew him. Even Andrew never got to meet him. Emigrating barely two months after he died means my life splits neatly into two halves, before and after. And the only people I really talk to from before are my parents.

I did talk to them Sunday night, but not about this; I made sure to call them to give them (my mom, really) a chance to do this before the dreaded week, but instead the conversation was wall-to-wall U.S. politics. At least my parents say things like "White supremacy is a problem" and "socialism isn't bad, we want socialized heath care" and "we saw a yard sign that said 'Jesus 2020' and thought that was a little bit over the top", but it was exhaustingly unrelenting; I didn't even get any gossip or updates on the weather!

So the only "conversation" I can get about my brother is with my past self, so I read over some of the entries with this tag. I'm surprised at how much it helped, actually -- as much as anything can, which is still not a lot. It was interesting observing some patterns that move too slowly for me to notice at the time: I've always wondered how to handle "do you have any siblings?" as a small-talk question, I've always worried about how unchanging the journal entries all feel, how sad I am that nothing is ever changing about my brother any more. I woke up feeling like that today, wondering if I'd even bother to say anything this year (apparently I thought the same thing by the time it'd been five years).

I am writing something again this year, partly to continue that conversation with my future self if I want to look back on this too, and partly because along with feeling like there's nothing new to say I did notice changes; I used to say I didn't mind the date of the anniversary itself but I stopped in the last few years and I certainly am minding it more lately. Two years ago I said yes to a group outing with tickets for something at the Leeds Library that just happened to be on this date. I didn't say anything, I thought I'd be fine and the distraction might be good, but then my company was found wanting. And for last year's Thanksgiving I told Facebook something like "I hate Thanksgiving but having to treat it like a normal day where I'm a functioning person turns out to not be good either." Maybe it is just as well there wasn't anywhere I could go or anyone I could see today. I'm not going to make plans that assume/require me to be fine next year.

Just after I wrote yesterday's entry, complaining about my face (I don't feel bad today but I did sleep until noon so I think I might not be entirely well), Andrew told me "I got an email from your mum saying she hasn't been able to get in touch with you for two days and are you okay." I rolled my eyes and snapped at him because as we all know my mom won't be back yet and I'm coping with that really well obviously.

He said the e-mail sounded like my mom and admittedly that is a thing she's done before and not a thing I could imagine my dad ever doing. But that didn't make any sense.

Still, even though I was tired from work and I'd had a tough day mental-healthwise, I figured this meant I couldn't wiggle out of this so I fired up Skype and...then I heard my mom saying "can you see me?" which is how all our conversations start (I never can; she still blames me every time she has failed to activate her own camera).

Glad as I was to see her, I knew it wouldn't be good that she was home and it wasn't. ( little bit of ominous medical detail and pondering what it's like for kids about my age to have two long-term ill parents. )

In parallel with dealing with my feelings about what I was hearing, I was actually angry at my parents too. Mom hadn't told me that she was back on Friday already. I barely bothered saying anything about Mother's Day on Sunday because I still thought she wouldn't even be able to see an e-mail if I sent it. I got a three-word e-mail asking if I could Skype, no indication that it was even my mom rather than my dad sending it. I appreciate Mom couldn't say much about why she was home without talking about how badly B was doing, and I appreciate that she wanted to do that face-to-face. But she could've...signed the damn e-mail? Since she and my dad share the account, and since I expected to be only hearing from him, I didn't think it was a big deal to talk to him Monday rather than Sunday. I would've tried harder to be good to her if I had known that was something it was possible for me to do.

Anyway, so my mom handed the iPad over to my dad and he said he didn't have anything to say. We commiserated about that -- not even sports to talk about! -- but it turned out he'd been to Fleet Farm (the kind of luxury we don't have yet in the UK!), stuff in the garden is growing well (my parents grew a lot of food even before it was now the cool thing everyone's doing!), the orioles had turned up for a couple days but then went away despite my dad now having two kinds of oriole-specific food because he loves them so much. Oh and he told me that ( their dog is almost certainly not long for this world. )

It just sucks when all these other things about difficulty and death circle back to how shitty it is that Chris died. Like I said, I wasn't having a good mental health day anyway and this right before bedtime did not help. I hoped I'd feel better today but I'm still thinking about all this stuff.

I remember talking to my grandpa many Christmases ago. His dementia seemed, for better or worse, to make it easier for him to say what other people wouldn't. It might have been what got him to tell me "I really miss Chris" when no one else in the family says so. It really stands out on my mind.

My grandpa died seven years after my brother. It's now been another seven years without either of them.

This Christmas my grandma talked a lot about them both. I see now that she did the same thing last year, only this time instead of telling a story about actual sleigh rides, she told me one about how my grandpa smoked a pipe until one day, on his way home from work, it froze up and he flung it away and that was it for him smoking a pipe (he still smoked cigars, but never a pipe again).

It was hard sometimes, but good.

I wonder if anything happens now that we'll tell stories about in future Christmases.

This'll be the one where my mom and I actually went to church in the middle of Christmas Eve dinner preparations -- something that usually only the men do in this gendered hellscape -- because it was the last service done by the pastor who's been there for 25 years. In his moist-eyed goodbye, he said "I married a lot of you..." and Andrew and I are one of those couples he married in that church. He also helped out at my brother's funeral, which had to be in the Catholic church but the usual priest was on vacation and the one who was substituting let this pastor from another denomination help out in the service, which my parents agreed the usual priest never would've allowed. It meant a lot to us as otherwise the funeral would've been done entirely by someone who was a stranger to my family. Whereas the pastor at my mom's church both had known my mom well (she helps out at church a lot) and he knew Chris as his daughter had dated Chris on and off for years. I don't have good memories of the funeral (I don't mean good in content, I mean good in quality; my brain wasn't making them then, or for six or twelve months after) but it came back to me now and my eyes were wet too.

It should be my brother's birthday today.

The run-up to Christmas was always about having to find two goddam presents for him (a nuisance only alleviated by knowing he had to do the same; my birthday is even closer to Christmas) so it still sometimes feels weird to...not be having to think about that.

He should be 36 today.

He didn't even get to be 22.

I should be calling him up to dutifully wish him happy birthday, strategize for seeing our parents soon for Christmas, ask about my niblings.

Current Mood: gonna get the good whisky out

I can't write much more right now but after I wrote that last post and before I even got a chance to post it, Mom said we should go through Chris's wicker chest.

My brother and I both had these; my mom started keeping stuff in them when we were tiny. Baby clothes, school reports, all kinds of keepsakes from our childhoods.

Both my parents and I just went through my brother's. It's the last thing left untouched since he died (almost 13 years).

I feel emotionally wrung out now, like an old dishrag.

Put a baseball game from a couple of days ago on in the background. Twins are playing the Mariners, and for some reason hearing Ichiro Suzuki's name is a jolt.

My brother used to talk about him (he was a Mariners fan as a kid when his glove had Ken Griffey Jr.'s fake-signature on it (my first had someone I never heard of but the second was Frank Viola so that's all right). We had to go see a Twins game once when the Mariners were in town so Chris could see him play; I was okay with this though because I got to see Randy Johnson pitch.

The commentators said this is Ichiro's eighteenth season, how amazing is that.

I didn't realize it before, but there were still players playing that Chris knew about.

Well hell. Now I'm gonna be sad when he retires.

It's funny how the littlest, most seemingly unimportant things fuck you up.

I did a survey about language learning today. Some of the things it asks are what language(s) you use when talking to different categories of family members: parents, older relatives, siblings.

I got kind of stuck on "siblings." I tried ticking the "English" box first (i.e. answering the question properly). But it felt wrong.

I changed it to "not applicable" and that felt wrong too.

I don't even remember which of the two I ended up going with. But I can't forget how both options made me feel.

I never know how to answer these questions, any questions that boil down to "do you have brothers or sisters?" Yes and no are both inadequate.

( Musings on the anniversary of my brother dying, on the ever-increasing gulf of time between us. )

...is what I said last year.

If you're going to die, don't die on a holiday that isn't on a fixed date. It means in future years the date of your death and the holiday will be on different days, and it makes two very difficult days. Last year, the twenty-forth of November was almost a week distant from Thanksgiving (which is always on the fourth Thursday of November) and I thought that was worse. But this year they're on the same day, today obviously, and my mom finds that harder.

So I'm glad they're able to do something different from how they usually spend Thanksgiving. My dad's sister and her partner have moved this year, they're fixing up what sounds like a nice house out in the woods in northern Minnesota, it sounds lovely. But it's also lovely because it's something new, because they're not doing what they always did, they're not surrounded by several generations of my mom's family without having their own children there. My aunt and her partner have grown-up children who are scattered around and who I don't think will be around this weekend. And since it's a long enough drive they're not just going for the day like they would if they were going to my mom's sister's, they're staying for the whole long weekend, which will keep them away from the whole holiday palaver, the Black Friday sales and the traffic and everything.

But I miss them. I didn't get to talk to them last week before they went, which is a shame. Thanks to Skype I should be able to talk to them at some point while they're at my aunt's, but still. I worry that they think I'm somehow unaffected by this because I'm not there, and we don't have the holiday. But I am, and I'm affected differently precisely because of those things.

Today is my brother's birthday. He would've -- should've -- been 32 now.

I wish I could give him a better gift than remembering him.

Ten years ago my brother died.

It was in the early hours of the morning on Thanksgiving. He'd been out with friends for a drink, because all his old high school buddies were back in town for the holiday. It was only five miles drive home.

He wasn't drunk, the roads weren't bad, the weather wasn't bad. It was just one of those things.

It bugs me that almost no one I know now ever got the chance to meet him. My life has changed so much that it feels completely disconnected, and I'm going around mourning something no one else understands, a holiday they don't even here, something that I've never really known how to deal with.

I don't have a lot of words, but I scanned and uploaded some pictures a day or two after he died, when we were getting a collection of them together to be shown at the visitation and funeral. Here they are, with what I said about them to my LJ audience in 2005.

( Read more... )

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29	30

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Growth at any age

Wonder full

[343/365] fortieth

[328/365] eighteen

[161/365] sometimes the snow falls in a certain way

[343/365]

[328/365] sixteen

[355/366] we're so glad it's Christmas vacation

[344/366] "My Own Epitaph, Which I Better Write Because I Know Too Many Poets"

[329/366] the year of Novembers

[133/366] difficulty and death

359/365

[343/365] Chris

Wicker chest

Ichiro

It never stops

This is the twelfth day like this

All I can say about today...

phantom birthdays

yahrzeit

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June 2025

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