If We Love, We Grieve

My beautiful brother would be, should be, 47 years old today. I have not written here in two years, partly because it’s not easy to find new ways to express my endless sadness at living without Amir all this time. 99 months without him. How could I even attempt to describe the enormous void in my life where my brother, my precious second sibling, should be? 

Amir's birthday is a day to celebrate his life, not his death, and to imagine who he would have been as he aged - a reality we have been sadly denied.

For over 8 years, I have struggled to put my feelings into words that would do justice to how deeply I miss him every single day. So, as I’ve done countless times when my own words fail me (an instance that is happening with more frequency as I inch ever closer to my golden years), I will turn to the words of others that perfectly describe my ongoing sorrow over my brother’s absence and what I've learned and continue to learn from it:

Dr. Edith Eger: 

“We grieve over not what happened but what didn’t happen.”

This is what I think of as “the grief double-whammy”: it’s our own grief over losing them and missing them, plus the grief we feel for them and for everything they are missing out on. This is something I did not understand in the slightest until I experienced profound loss. And I never could have imagined that it gets more pronounced with the passing of time.

Marc Maron (talking with Stanley Tucci):

“It's interesting that you bring up absence, because that's what becomes really hard to understand, is that somebody was here. And now you live with their absence for the rest of your life. And it's almost active and it's always there – that absence. You grieve, you move through things, your heart heals, your mind heals, maybe you move on, but that absence is so profound because all possibilities are gone.”

When I heard Marc Maron say "all possibilities are gone" during this interview on his podcast, I absolutely felt it in my chest. It is one of the heaviest parts of grief to grapple with: there are no possibilities for Amir to become what he wanted to be, no possibilities for him to be part of our lives, no possibilities for us to spend time with him again.

Nick Cave:

“It seems to me that if we love, we grieve. That's the deal. That's the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief's awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre, all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.”

Michelle Obama:

“It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you'd otherwise find beautiful… and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.”

Grief is so lonely, indeed. And surprisingly, it only deepens over time, as we get farther and farther away from the time he was here with us. The road ahead without him seems impossibly long and empty, but we push forward as best we can, missing him every step of the way and left to only imagine who he would be.