Rotisserie

Our beautiful Amir should have reached age 45 today. I'm still in disbelief as I type that sentence. He will always be 38. Losing Amir and living without him never gets easier, the hole in our hearts never gets smaller and the enormous void in our family never goes away. Who would he be at 45? Would he be happier? Healthier? Thriving? Surviving? Where would he be? His absence is felt every single day of our lives, in countless, unimaginable, indescribable ways.

When I think of all the visits and conversations we'd have had and the memories we'd have made over these past 6 years, I am physically shaken by the thought of how much we have missed. This is torture. I don't advise anyone deeply grieving to explore those thoughts. It hurts too much.

I read this quote in the NY Times a few months ago, about a man who lost his wife and children in a plane crash in the '70s: "His life was utterly bifurcated by the accident. There was Act I and Act II."

I know this sad truth so well. The profoundly different second act of our lives began on that horrific Saturday, November 22, 2014. The first act is a sublime, vivid, essential catalog of memories. But there are no more memories to be made with Amir. That heartbreaking fact will never be acceptable or understandable.

That said, I am ever grateful to have those vivid memories. Here's one that makes me smile often: Amir was 6 or 7, we were in a restaurant with our parents and we were studying our menus when Amir declared he wanted the "RAW-di-serry" chicken. I doubt he'd ever seen the word "rotisserie" nor did he know what it meant, but he was eager to show off his advanced reading skills and his grasp of multi-syllable words. To this day, whenever I see the word "rotisserie," I can only hear it in my mind as "RAW-di-serry" -- the result of a proud attempt by a whip-smart kid to impress his family with his growing vocabulary.

Amir, we miss you more than any words could express. Friends, please conjure your own memories of Amir today - remember a funny moment, something brilliant he wrote or said, the warmth of his smile, his silliness, his wit, his unmatched Amir-ness. There is no one on this earth like him, nor will there ever be.

Incomplete

Recently, a fellow bereaved sibling told our group that he felt he'd lost the "one true witness" to his childhood. This statement has stayed with me, lingering in my brain for weeks. Yes, I still have my sister and we share infinite memories of childhood. But Amir was a vital witness, a third keeper of our childhood memories. Without him, so many memories are fuzzier, so many incidents and events are lost to our minds. We will forever be lacking his voice speaking truth to the lives we've lived. Losing a sibling closes the window to so many memories and certainties. Yael and I have lost a witness.

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.

April, Come She Will (featuring Weird Al!)

My beautiful brother Amir should have turned 44 today. It is beyond belief how intensely I miss him every day. The month of April always feels heavy and sad because it holds this special date on which we no longer celebrate, but grieve what should have been. Of course, being in the middle of a pandemic only adds to the heaviness and adds a bonus layer of anxiety. And particularly at a time when so many families are bonding over shared time at home together.

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.

When it comes to laughter, no one fostered it more significantly or continuously in my life than Amir did. A few weeks ago, one of my favorite podcasts, Hit Parade, did an entire episode about the brilliant Weird Al Yankovic. It shouldn't surprise anyone who's read this blog to learn that Amir loved Weird Al. He loved parody songs (especially smart ones like Al's) and he relished Al's videos, which were hugely popular on MTV throughout the '80s. He loved "Like a Surgeon" and "Jeopardy" and especially "Eat It." As a super-creative kid, Amir even enjoyed writing his own parodies, which got more off-color as he got older, including a hormonal-teen version of The Beatles' "When I'm 64" called... ready for this?... "Will You Be My Whore?"* The co-writer of this inglorious ditty shall remain nameless unless he chooses to come forward and proclaim ownership.

Back to Weird Al. I've been hooked on Hit Parade and its host Chris Molanphy since the first episode I heard. It's likely I've written about this here before and likely will again, as I've yet to delve into the inspired episode on '80s New Wave. Molanphy is a musicologist bar none, though Amir could have proved a formidable challenger in the realm of music trivia. I know I've talked about our epic music trivia battles and wagers here more than once.

This particular episode of Hit Parade also dove into the deliciously weird world of Dr. Demento, another of Amir's favorites in his younger days. When we were kids, Dr. Demento hosted a weekly syndicated radio show that we often listened to just hanging out in Amir's room playing games or, on a few occasions, as a family in the car. Amir loved "Fish Heads" and "Sister Mary Elephant" and that weird song about L.A. that included a nod to the LaBrea Tar Pits - who remembers this?

But my favorite memory is Amir, Yael and I giggling our asses off to "Boot to the Head" and using that phrase whenever we were irritated with one another (e.g., "I'll give you a boot to the head if you don't let me use the bathroom!") or just teasingly (e.g., I specifically recall Amir once telling me, "You deserve a boot to the head for that outfit.")

Anyway, I'm not feeling particularly eloquent today, but I had to share my remembrances on a day that I should be spending with him physically and not only in my mind and heart. I celebrate him in spite of not being able to celebrate with him. Amir, we miss you so much. The holes in our hearts only grow larger each day we cannot be with you.

*Sample lyric: "Will you still ball me? Will you still call me? Will you be my whore?"

Good Times Come to Me Now

2020. Unfuckingbelievable. Another year without my beautiful brother, a brand-new decade he will not see. This never, never, never gets easier.

While on my usual walk home the other day, a random Amir moment crept up on me when this most random of songs popped into my head out of fucking nowhere:

This earworm launched me into an exceptionally clear flashback. The song was inescapable, in near-constant radio rotation, in 1983, when 7-year-old Amir was the ideal age to go bananas for such infectious shit. He may have owned the 45" or maybe he recorded it on a cassette off the radio (as we both did frequently). Either way, he couldn't get enough of it. I can still hear his sweet, high-pitched voice singing it in his room, probably mangling the lyrics but belting it out with an enthusiasm and energy reserved for little kids.

He fucking loved that silly song.

Another thing Amir loved was making lists, a diversion he inherited from me, his list-loving sister. This past weekend, I was thumbing through one of his spiral-bound notebooks, in which he'd recorded sports stats, scoring for Boggle games with friends, random to-do lists, notes to self, etc. Among the pages, I noticed two lists in particular that made my heart sink. One was a playlist of songs, labeled at the top with his nickname for me - likely a playlist he'd wanted to burn to CD for me or otherwise share with me. We had discussed a few of the songs before, but the others were unknown to me and I've now sought them out to add to my library, as he had evidently thought I'd appreciate them. (He was right.)

The other was a list of friends numbering about 10 or 11 and headed by my husband, Jason (who was Amir's friend long before they became brothers-in-law). Everyone was listed in a rather formal manner, by first and last name, including people who'd been his friends since childhood. They were separated into two groups. No family members made the list. 

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?

We will never know. Never. Five years after Amir's death and I still cannot fucking accept the fact that I cannot call or email my brother with random questions. I can't call him to ask some silly bit of music trivia (he was better than Google, in many ways). I can't text him to tell him I just saw a guy on the subway who strangely resembled Bert from Sesame Street. I can't plan a visit with him or look forward to a family gathering with him at the table. The list is endless and it will never get shorter.

Five.

Five years. Five long, lonely, incredibly painful years without my darling brother. It does not seem possible that grief has gripped us for this long. It feels like yesterday I heard his voice and his laugh, drank in his smile, delighted in his wit and humor, enjoyed new music he recommended. Tonight, I will be on a plane to Brazil, thoughts and memories of Amir keeping me company for those long hours across dark skies. I wish so badly I could enjoy things fully and freely the way I once did, but it is still incredibly difficult to do so without him. 

My immediate family has not celebrated Thanksgiving since Amir's death and I don't know if we will again. I've made an effort to travel this week each year, often with Yael. In 2016, we celebrated Amir in Italy. Last year, we lit a candle in Prague. This year, we'll be together in Brazil. Traveling on such a painful anniversary is bittersweet and joyous and somewhat of a relief - it reminds me that I must continue to live and learn and explore new worlds and embark on adventures because Amir cannot. In many ways, I see travel and exploration as compulsory elements of my grief process.

Five unbearably long years without Amir. I continue to grieve for him every single day, but I am so grateful I have the freedom and opportunity to explore the world, a chance Amir never had in his short life. I love you and miss you tremendously every day, my darling brother.

November Rain

With our Grandma Lida in 2007

Bob Geldof wrote a song proclaiming August is "a heavy month." True, Sir Bob, but November is the heaviest month for me and my family. This month marks 5 years since our beloved Amir left us. I still have moments where the very fact that he is not here takes my breath away. I still do not believe it's possible that he is not with us, that the sun keeps rising, that our lives could possibly continue without my brother. How can they keep making Star Wars movies when he's not here? How can his favorite artists continue making music? How can Yael and I continue to exist as two instead of three? How has this new reality gone on for FIVE effing years? How have we survived it?

And yet, life goes on. That, I've learned, is one of the most painful elements of grief - the unending sorrow of being left behind to carry on when that's the last thing you want to do. I don't want to end my life but, more often that not, I resent and lament that I have to go on without him here.

Grief continues to sneak up on me like a sly cat. Hearing a random song in the grocery or drug store, smelling a certain brand of cigarette or laundry detergent, stumbling across a meme that would have Amir giggling, reading a news story about something from our childhood... all can stop me cold in my tracks, aching with remembrance.

For example, there's been extensive media coverage lately about the fall of the Berlin Wall, 30 years ago. It was my first year of college and I remember talking to Amir about how fucking bizarre it was that David Hasselhoff was performing there. Then, this week, in NPR's reporting on the anniversary, they interviewed a man who was 6 years old when the wall fell. I listened to him recall how, after watching Hoff's concert, he and his little friends had presumed that Hasselhoff himself was responsible for the wall coming down! I got a chuckle out of the story, but Amir would have found it utterly hilarious. The thought of Amir missing out on so many of life's little absurdities makes every memorable moment bittersweet. 

13-year-old Amir, with Dad

I'm also hearing a lot about the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street, the show that was so integral to our childhood. Oh, how the coverage takes me back! Even the voices of the muppets remind me of Amir, particularly Bert. Why did preschool-age Amir seem to feel such an affinity for Bert? Probably  his gentleness and wiseness. Even as a preschooler, Amir understood that, in many ways, Bert was the teacher and Ernie the student. Bert was the reasonable foil to Ernie's silliness, which, to be fair, Amir also got a kick out of. No one could ever say Amir wasn't silly - he thrived on it. I will never forget the sound of young Amir's high-pitched giggles at the antics of the muppets or Mel Brooks movies or so many other ridiculous things he loved. What would he make of the endless stream of absurdities the world is seeing now?

Fuck November.