Dark Day

On The Gilmore Girls (bear with me--I am watching a lot of this show lately) there is a character named Luke, who owns the diner in the town of Stars Hollow. Every year, all the townspeople know that Luke has a "Dark Day," where he basically disappears and nobody knows where he goes. Eventually we find out that Luke's Dark Day is the anniversary of his father's death, and he goes off to be alone and think about his father. He isn't fit to be around people on that day.

Well, today is my Dark Day. Nine years ago today my little brother decided to exit this world. April 7th. The day everything broke into pieces. It's amazing to me how one single day, one hour, one moment, can change the person you are forever. On that day I became the girl who lost her brother.

I have always been a dreamer. I imagine worlds upon worlds. When I was younger I was constantly making up stories about my life that were more exciting, more dramatic, more appealing, than my life actually was. The ability to embellish the truth is part of what makes me a good writer, I suppose. But it has also left me with this strange disconnect from reality at times. Sometimes my own life does not seem real to me. When I think of my brother being dead, even after nine years, it still does not feel true to me. It feels like a lie I've told myself. It feels like a dream, and if I could just make myself wake up, everything would be okay. I could pick up the phone and hear his voice right now. My heart just refuses to accept that he is gone.

They say that denial is the first stage of grief but through all of this I have come to understand that you don't feel the stages of grief in any particular order. For nine years I've been going through them all: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Like the writer Anne Lamott says, grief is like a lazy susan. Every day you turn it and just see what you get.

Some April 7ths, especially in the early years, I could hardly get out of bed. I go over that day again and again in my mind. I remember the way my hand shook when my dad called to tell me, the way I wanted to drop the phone but it was too late. I remember how the weather was beautiful and sunny in Caldwell that day, and there were new flowers coming up in front of our apartment, red and yellow tulips. We drove to Idaho Falls and there were dark stormclouds over the city, and it was like we were driving into my brother's death. I remember the animal sound my mother made when I came up the walkway, and that sound has dwelled in me ever since. And there are a thousand other details that flash through my mind, none worse than the moment I first saw him dead, first stood in front of his body and reeled with the pain of it.

But in the last few years I have finally come to a place where I can think about more than just that day. I reach back to Jeff when he was alive. I remember taking him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. He was on the ballroom dance team and he just whisked me around the dance floor, and I had never known him so confident and full of grace, so grown up.

I try to think about the undeniably darling little boy he was, his shy little smile, his chubby fingers clutching mine. How on my first day of school he stood on the front steps with me proudly, and then cried when I went somewhere he didn't get to go. We always stood on the steps together on the first day of school, every year from then on.

I think about our first night together where he suddenly began to cry. My parents were getting up to see to him when they suddenly saw the light switched on in his room, and heard my voice saying, "Not to worry, little brother. Your sister is here to take care of you."

That last one brings me to tears every time I think about it, because no matter how much I know that what happened to Jeff was not my fault, I can't help but feel that in the end I failed to take care of him. But he knew I loved him, didn't he? Isn't that the most important thing?

So today, as you can see, I am already going through it all, both the ups and downs. I know there will be a moment when I just have to hide somewhere and face the truth of it, the gaping hole that opens up in my chest. And there will be another moment where I will try to remember what his hands looked like. And another where I will laugh out loud at something that he said. And I will just love him. And I will miss him.