24 August 2017

The Cutest Girl Scout

A few weeks ago, I received this message via Facebook from a childhood friend of Amir's:
I don't think we ever met. I was a friend of Amir's from elemetary and jr. high school. If truth be told, he was my first crush.
I was visiting my parents this past weekend and we were watching old home movies that my parents had digitized. One was of the Germain St. School Halloween carnival. There was a scene of me (dressed as a witch) waiting in line for a game with Amir who was dressed as a Girl Scout. I must admit this brought on a brief desire to cyberstalk him. I was certain that he would be a professor somewhere or an author in a corduroy blazer with suede elbows.
I am so sorry to find him gone. Your tribute blog is beautiful and I'm not sure if this will bring you any comfort, but today there is another person in the world who is saddened by his loss and remembers him fondly.
My heart jumped a bit as soon as I saw Amir's name in her message. This is nothing new. I smiled at the memory of Amir in the Girl Scout uniform--he was 8 or 9 at the time, blond and smirking and cheeky and cuter than any other Girl Scout around.

I shared the message with my sibling-loss support group and I found one friend's reaction particularly interesting: she felt that such messages can sometimes cause more pain than comfort. I disagreed, saying I'm always happy to hear from anyone who remembers my brother, whether in a good light or not. It crushes my heart to pieces to think that my parents and Yael and I are the only ones thinking of him and remembering him every day.

My friends and I ended up having an interesting discussion on the issue of receiving messages such as this. Like me, others said they found such messages comforting and, like me, they wished they would receive them more often. I long to hear that Amir made an impact on people; that they were affected by him in some way. I long to connect with people who miss Amir and who keep his memory alive in their minds, as I do every day.

I thanked the sender for reaching out, telling her how much it means to us to hear from people who have fond memories of Amir. I never tire of hearing stories about him, talking about him, remembering him. That's the whole fucking point of this blog.