Since Amir's death, one of my most treasured possessions has been his blue/green hoodie, which I have worn only at home but nearly every day in the chill of the fall-winter-spring months. (I think it’s the one he’s wearing in the photo.) It no longer smelled like him or even like his cigarettes; still, washing it for the first time was painful, as if I was erasing him in some way. Sadly, my precious piece of Amir has become so worn out that I decided to retire it before it lost its former shape completely.
Remembering Amir
April 7, 1976 - November 22, 2014
01 April 2024
Crumbs of Peace
Since Amir's death, one of my most treasured possessions has been his blue/green hoodie, which I have worn only at home but nearly every day in the chill of the fall-winter-spring months. (I think it’s the one he’s wearing in the photo.) It no longer smelled like him or even like his cigarettes; still, washing it for the first time was painful, as if I was erasing him in some way. Sadly, my precious piece of Amir has become so worn out that I decided to retire it before it lost its former shape completely.
07 April 2023
If We Love, We Grieve
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.
07 April 2021
Rotisserie
25 December 2020
Incomplete
On that note, I was recently thinking about the line "You complete me" from the movie Jerry Maguire. Even seeing it (with Yael) in our 20s, I found that line ridiculous, thinking even then that no partner or lover would ever make me "complete." My siblings completed me. I believed that from a young age. Much as I adored my late husband Jason and the huge role he played in making my life fuller, he did not make me "complete."
My siblings made me complete. And, without both of them, I am simply... incomplete. Like a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece. I am incomplete and I will be until my last day.
That leads me to a podcast I relate to hugely: Last Day, created by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, who lost her beloved younger brother and only sibling. Her wonderful podcast delves deeply into the painful subjects of addiction, mental illness and suicide. In a recent episode, she said of herself and her parents, "We used to measure time in weeks and months and years. Now, there were two categories: before he died and after. And everything that came before suddenly felt futile."
This resonates with me every single day of my life since November 22, 2014. The before and after is stark, drastic and profound. I look at photos of Yael and my parents and I from before Amir died and we look like different people, people untouched by the immeasurable pain and relentless grief that would mark the rest of our lives after that unimaginable November day six years ago. I miss those people and those full lives more than I can possibly express.
07 April 2020
April, Come She Will (featuring Weird Al!)
In all of this, I cannot count the number of times each day I desperately wish I could be sharing this surreal new normal with Amir: talking to him about all the strangeness and scariness of what's happening all around us and finding ways to laugh through our anxiety.
07 January 2020
Good Times Come to Me Now
So, I'm left to forever wonder... what the hell was this list? Amir was not one to send holiday cards or plan gatherings. Were they people he owed money to? People he wanted to get into touch with or re-establish contact with? People who'd borrowed his books or records and hadn't returned them? People who had been there for him in some meaningful way? People who he believed had wronged him somehow? And why two separate groupings?