Nothing but time

 I don't take as many pictures as I used to. Not nearly.

I have mixed feelings about this. After my brother died and I realized the amount of photos I have of him and with him are finite, I strongly encouraged everyone to take as many photos as possible. I joked recently that Jason and I have about 1000 photos taken in front of our red door. I spent years documenting my workout photos, my meals. Lately though, I've found myself just...living. Vibing. Enjoying the moment in the moment.

 Part of me thinks I spent so much time and energy and effort documenting all those moments because I was so afraid I would forget them and that felt unbearable. I needed those moments. I had waited my whole life, worked so hard my whole life, just to get to have them. They had to be perfect and they had to be forever.

I have known my entire life that nothing is perfect, no matter how it looks from the outside. I will be fifty years old in nine days and I am also becoming increasingly aware that nothing is forever.

 

2025 has been year of transition and change. 

 Our amazing daughter, all on her own, bought her very first home. It's the perfect first home for her and reminds me a lot of who she is as a human: cute and quirky, but solid and dependable. She's always the child I've worried the least about, because she knows herself so very well. She's smart and responsible and makes good decisions. She has a job she loves and she's great at. She has amazing friends who treat her like family. She's happy, and there is nothing I want more for her, even though, if I'm being honest, it was very hard for me to have my daughter living thirteen miles away. Only thirteen miles, I know, and I joked with her that I could walk that distance to get to her if she needed me. I said that to make her feel better but I said it to make myself feel better too. Just because this life is exactly what I want for her doesn't mean it's not hard.

Despite saying she wanted to live alone, she purchased a three bedroom home and immediately upon closing invited her brother to be her roommate, so Jason and I became empty nesters. Jonathan is a college professor now, which fills me with a level of awe that is hard to explain, especially when I think about that little boy who struggled to learn to read, who would sit at the kitchen table with his sister working on homework together. She would rub his back lightly as he sounded out words, encouraging him in ways that perhaps only a twin could. I remember it so vividly. I will never forget those moments.

He's also met a woman that could someday be his wife and, speaking honestly, that is both extremely exciting and also terrifying for me, as a mother. I decided before I met his girlfriend that my feelings about her did not matter- as long as she loved my son and treated him kindly that was it. Period. I do like her though, very much, and I immediately recognized what a good match she is for him in so many ways. I had a very specific picture in my brain of who would be right for him (which I never, ever shared with him) and she ticks every single box. She fits in with our family so seamlessly, and I didn't realize how important that was to me. 

There are things to work out there though and last night she talked about someday when they go to live in her home country, and my heart didn't exactly break, but something caught there that I can't really explain.  Just because it's exactly what I want for him doesn't mean it's not hard. 

 

2025 is the year I turn fifty, and that seems transformative too.

 

Generally, I'm very excited and happy to be turning fifty. I am very healthy, both physically and spiritually. I have a calmness and peace that I have been seeking forever. My days are busy and full, and I'm grateful and glad for all the wonderful people I have in my life. I'm also so thankful for a calm and loving marriage, a quiet home, and my routines. My life does not look the way I thought it would look at fifty, but it's exactly what it's supposed to look like right now. There is so much comfort in that. There is so, so much joy in that.

Still, there are moments when fifty seems, well, old. Much older than I feel in my heart. I said quite wistfully to Jason, "It's like half my life is over" and he helpfully pointed that out that the average life expectancy of a woman in the United States is only 78.4 years old, so much more than half of my life is already over. He did concede that I will probably live to a hundred, and I assured him I have no doubt I will. Maybe even older.

Time marches on though, and so do I.

 

 You'll forgive me though, for sometimes seeing the college professor as that little boy wearing a jellybean helmet learning to ride a bike. For remembering that black lipstick that my daughter tried out in high school. For seeing my husbands smile for the first time ever in his uncle, and his cousin's son, and finally feeling like I got that extended family I always wanted. For still shedding tears when I think about Ginger, our Big Orange Dog from Knoxville. Our tiny little brown house that wasn't quite big enough to hold all the love that was there. I have forgotten more than I'll ever remember, but what I do remember is so, so precious.

 

I'm just out here living in these moments.  

 

Hate is a train that thunders aimless through my head

When my brother died a lot of people weren't sad.

 

That seems like an odd statement, I guess, but it's true. There were people who loved him a lot who were really broken and devastated. There were people who loved him who were angry and hurt that he took his own life. There were people who were hurt by him who were fine to see him go. There were people, a lot of people it turns out, that think that all addicts are worthless, undeserving scum, and they don't care that they die. They celebrated his death. One less addict and the world is a better place.

 

They say it. Online they'll type these things with their whole chest. They'll make "jokes" that are entirely unfunny, but they'll say them anyway. It's easy to be brave online, I guess. It's easy to pretend that it couldn't happen to you, or your brother, or some member of your family. 

 

You aren't immune, though. None of us are.

 

A lot of people are brave in real life these days too. I guess it's easier to be since it's apparently totally okay to hate people for any number of reasons. People I've known for many years, even people I'm related to and have known my entire life say awful things directly to my face having absolutely no idea what my views are, but expecting me to agree. Worse, sometimes they do know my heart and they say cruel things anyway. Equating how someone votes or loves or worships with mental illness- when mental illness destroyed my brother's life and keeps me on the edge of mine- is cruel. There's no other way to say it. Knowing what someone lost and holding onto that hate? I can't understand it. I will never understand.

 

It's never funny and it's not okay.

 

I do wonder though.

 

When people told me my brother was burning in Hell because he took his own life: are you proud of yourself for that?

 

If someone in your family took their own life would you be okay if I said that to you? If someone in your family was murdered would you be okay if I said they were worthless or stupid because of mistakes they'd made in the past? It's okay for you to say it, so it's okay for me to say it too, right?

 

Right?

 

I wouldn't though. I know how much it hurts. I know my brother was a flawed human being and he hurt a lot of people, including me, but he didn't deserve to be called worthless. He wasn't scum. He wasn't undeserving. He was human.

 

Even if your relative or friend or parent said those things to me, I won't say they deserved to die. Not because of who they were or what they said or whether or not they could dish it out and not take it. But only, ever, because of who I am. Or at least who I am trying to be.

 

It's okay for you to not grieve my brother. I mean that. It's 1000% okay for you to have zero feelings whatsoever about him. It's okay for you to say, "I'm sorry for his kids. I'm sorry for his parents. I'm sorry for his sisters" and not feel anything at all about him. That's not a crime and it doesn't make you a jerk. It's okay. I would say this about anyone who died, not just my brother. It's okay to not grieve someone you didn't know. It's okay to feel indifferent to someone who hurt you or hurt people who you love and care about. It's okay to reserve your sympathy for someone else.  I have grieved enough for him to cover the oceans, the mountains, and the entirety of the sky.  Every day there is loss: shootings and car accidents and drug overdoses and old age. People lose others every day, in so many ways, and the enormity of that loss can be so overwhelming that I feel I can't breathe. Sometimes my own grief and loss and pain is so loud. So big and heavy and cavernous that I feel like I can't take one more thing. Not one more. I understand, so deeply, the too much of it all. I would never begrudge anyone reserving their energy for something or someone else. 

 He was human though, and that's the thing I guess I don't want you to forget about him. The thing that so many people do forget about people they deem "less than".

 

I just want you to know. He wasn't scum. He wasn't worthless. He wasn't a lost cause. His addiction was terrible and hurtful and he wasn't perfect. But the world is not a better place without him. The world is a much less beautiful place without him. I grieve not only for myself and all the people still here who did love him, but for all those people who never got to meet him. 

 

I just wanted to remind you today that you get to choose how you show your face to this world. 

I know how I want to show mine.

 

24 hours

 One day is the worst day of your life.

The day that the most unimaginable horror happens, and it happens to you.

The day you struggle to breathe. To survive. The day you pray for the night to come because that means this day, this worst day, ends. 

Then it's the next day.

You're still breathing.

You survived.

 

 

And then, you have to navigate the rest of your life. 

 

No one talks about the day after and then the day after that. When you wake up and you forget, for two seconds, about that worst day. Then it all comes back and it's another day and it's not over. You still have to face it. You still have to live.

 

Then it's another day and another. Time keeps moving and so do you. You feel like you are in molasses in Winter sometimes, but you keep moving.

 

No one talks about this. 

 

The trauma. 

The ripping apart. 

The folding together. 

 

And during all this?

 

You still have to be a person.

 

An employee.

A wife.

A mom.

 

Dinner still needs to be made. Dishes still need to be done. You still have to clean the bathrooms and get the groceries and sit in meetings and perform tasks. You have to pretend like none of it happened. Like the worst imaginable thing, the thing you most dreaded in the world, didn't just happen. 

 

You don't forget though.

 

You never forget.

 

Another day happens and then another week.

Another month.

Another year.

 

You don't think about it, this worst, most horrible day every single second anymore. It doesn't consume you the way it once did. You are able to sit in meetings and pay attention. You can make dinner without burning it. You can watch an entire episode of your television show, or read a whole chapter in a book. It's better.

 

 

It's not better.

But it's better.

 

People forget, because it's better.

 

You don't forget though. You never, ever forget. Your body keeps the score and sometimes you're okay. You're perfectly fine. You are laughing or driving or climbing a ladder and all of the sudden you remember the worst day of your life and you can't breathe anymore. You can't see. That day, that worst day, didn't go away.  

 

Other people forget, but you never do. They say ugly things about people who are drug addicts, or who took their own life, or who had bipolar disorder forgetting that you loved someone who was an addict, who did take their own life, who did suffer with bipolar disorder. They forget because it didn't hurt them. Even if it did hurt them, they still sometimes say things about others. Because it's so easy to "other" people you don't know. It's so easy to talk terribly about addicts who are the sons of politicians, as though they aren't people too. They talk about those "selfish" people who took their own lives, not realizing or understanding that it has nothing to do with selfishness and everything to do with pain. They say things like, "Oh I was being bi-polar" when they were simply upset and having human emotions. None of it's okay. People destroy you so casually. 

 

They don't realize what you had to do to rebuild after that worst day. That worst day of your life.

 

You forgive them though, or at least don't say anything. No one is responsible for your worst day. For your pain. For your grief. Your loss is your own and no one can take it. People exist that love you so much and they would carry it for you if they could, but they can't. It's yours to carry, forever.

 

But you breathe.

You survive.

 

People call you a snowflake, a bleeding heart. All manner of mean, ugly things because you care.  You understand that people are complex and no one is all good or all bad and not everyone does. Hate is easier. It's always easier.

 

But not for you.

You can't hate.

 

You understand what hate does. You can't hurt any more than you already hurt. 

 

You lived through the worst day. 

Que hermosa vida

 Growing up I had a lot of really big dreams. 

 

I want you to know I still do. 

 

My dreams are different now though. 

I dream a lot about peace. About building community and friendship and love. 

I dream about travel and adventure. I dream about being successful, even though that means something very different than it used to. 

I dream about making my husband as happy as possible and giving him every single thing he deserves. 

I always thought it was wrong of me to want more. But I want more. 

The world is so big and so beautiful. 

We are just a tiny dot. 

We're only here for a moment. A heartbeat.

And it's just so damn beautiful. 

So we're going to love more. 

Lean into our people. The people who love us back. Who want the best for us. Who see things in us that we can't even see in ourselves. 

We're going to try new things without fear. 

Breathing it all in. 

The places, the people, the moments. 

It's a beautiful life. 

I'm thankful for it all, every day. 

Steps

 

In 2022 my brother died by suicide and I remember so clearly the feeling of panic and despair on New Years Eve. I didn’t want 2022 to end, even though it was the most awful year of my life, because it felt very deeply like that year ending took me further away from my brother.

2023 felt very similar and now 2024 is coming to a close.

 

Yesterday morning I was out walking, as I do most days. This walk felt especially sad. 2024 was an extremely discouraging year and the disappointments have stacked up on me lately. I have come to realize that I put too much time and effort into certain relationships that aren't healthy. I've done this time and again over the years, it's never worked out for me, and yet here I am fully forty-nine years old and still trying. I didn't win the big award at work...again. I didn't get the promotion that I deserve either. Despite all my hard work, I am still not Beyonce and it seems really unfair for me to put as much time and effort into my workouts and eating as I do and still be so absolutely mid.

 

It's more than that too, of course. It always is.

 

I am worried about my children. As usual.  I want everything for them and the world around them seems blindingly unfair. I worry about my nieces and nephews, particularly the ones who share the most with me...the ones who have become my bonus kids. I want everything for them too. I worry about our country and the direction we are headed. I almost completely avoid social media and news, but the news I have seen and heard has been troubling. 

 

Also? I miss my brother. He loved Christmas. He loved me. It feels lonely and hard without him and it's never going to get better. No one ever asks me how I am. They ask how my parents are and I'm sure they are not great and will never be great again. I am also not great but it doesn't matter. My grief is mine and that's it.  It's been almost three years and my grief only matters to me now. The passing of each year just reminds me how much further away he is and I hate it. I hate it so much.

 

I paused to take a photo of the sunrise and in that moment I had the most overwhelming feeling of peace. 

 

 

You aren’t walking further away from him. You are walking toward him.

 

 

I can't fix any of this. I can't bring him back. I can't change the world or the country or even the minds of people who have lost them. My grief is mine alone and I can't make anyone else care about it. I'm a fixer, I always have been, and it's almost overwhelming to me sometimes that I cannot figure out a solution for any of this.

 

Yet.

 

I will be 50 in 2025 and if I am anything like the women on both sides of my family this means I have at least 40 years of my life left to life. I fully intend to live these years as big and bold as I have lived the last ten, but thinking that I am walking towards that beautiful light that made up my sweet brother gives me so much hope. 

It was a gift to walk alongside him while he was here. I did not realize I was walking him home. Not then.

I don't have to fix everything.

 

 

I just have to keep walking.