Crumbs of Peace

Isn't that a lovely term? "Crumbs of peace." A fellow member of my bereaved siblings group uses this term to describe little signs and winks she receives from her dead sister. Those of us who have lost someone so precious to us find comfort in our own "signs" that they are near - a particular bird, a song on the radio, a feather drifting past, a flicker of lights, a penny or other coin found on the street. For me, the first of these signs came on New Year's Eve, 2015 - one year after Amir's death and only 5 months after Jason's - when a framed photo I have of the two of them that rested on a bookcase in my old apartment suddenly hurled itself from the shelf and landed at my feet as I glanced it while walking past. No joke. I don't believe in an afterlife or anything like that, but in that moment, I felt like the two of them were either (a) fucking with me for a laugh, or (b) letting me know they loved me and were still with me. That is a crumb of peace, which I cherish.

It's April again, a month that should include celebrating Amir's birthday WITH HIM and not just sadly imagining who he would have been. I don't need a birthday to celebrate him - I do this in my own way every fucking day. He should have been 48 this year. I'm sure I'll want to write on the 7th, but for now, it's Monday and work beckons.

Still, I awoke feeling mournful, the "Aprilness" setting in - that familiar sadness that creeps in at the start of a season so ripe with blooming and rebirth. Grieving feels infinitely heavier when life is blossoming all around. It's a heaviness that's hard to express to anyone who's not experienced it.

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. 

Amir's hoodie is now carefully folded and resting in a box filled with letters, cards and other trinkets from Amir – the box that means more to me than anything else in my home. My own crumb of peace.

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.