11 Years

"We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey." ~Kenji Miyazawa

My friend Deanna had this tattooed on herself recently...a fitting quote for life in general.

On this 11th anniversary of my little brothers passing I find myself surrounded by grief...shrouded in the anguish of 2 women who lost their boys to suicide. Nothing spurs perspective like spending hours on the phone with a crying mom missing her boy...living in a personal hell over the events that have changed her life forever. Loss is an understatement. How do you comfort someone agonizing over her son being dead on the floor for 4 hours - alone, before anyone got to him? Brokenhearted that she never got to see her son, hold his hand or hug him one last time before cremation...reliving the horror in her mind of his last moment...alone with his dark sadness and sickness...I just sit there quietly weeping along with her - reminded of how life was 11 years ago as I imagined all the same things and obsessed about details and drowned in a well full of WHAT IF's trying to get through the day.

Mindfuckery is the word alright...how do you tell someone so deep in guilt, sorrow and their own personal hell that they won't always feel that way...? It is a lie...you always feel that way - you just get more used to it...time heals shit all...time just provides people with more opportunity to get better at day to day crap.

I could type about 10 pages worth of my own self indulgent grief drivel right now...but I feel like sitting in the back seat and just trying to focus on others right now...my grief is weathered...I feel like a veteran of this shit...with 11 years experience feeling heartbroken and lost about something I can never change. I have bigger fish to fry...

My brother Glenn would be 35 is he were still alive...I would enjoy laughing at his gray hair as he tried to maintain his hardcore youthful facade or his midlife crisis he would surely be having...or how much child support he would probably be doling out by now...it is weird to imagine him as a full fledged grown up b/c to me he is always this little kid in a floppy hat...even when I dream about him he is usually the little kid I grew up with. Even when he was alive and in his 20's this is what he was to me in my head and heart...

And so it goes...onward we march trying to make sense of it all...I am pondering many topics these days: mental illness stigma, advocacy, prevention, heartburn....fuck I have heartburn a lot these days...I am obsessing terribly...my kid walks out of the house and I feel like I might have a heart attack...

On the flip side...her coming to Sam Roberts with Donna and I was fun...really nice actually... great seeing her enjoy music like I do. I can see it in her...she has the bug...I gave it to Glenn and to her. ::takes a bow::

It is almost 3 am...this weary broad has to get to bed...I am too old for these late nights...light a candle for the lost boys today....for Glenn, Jesse and Taylor....