It’s been 129 days since that day in February when – with a crippling two words uttered quietly over a crackling line – our lives would forever change as that of my brother’s was lost.
The journey has been hard since that morning. And not just in the normal five-stages-of-grief kind of hard, but in the kind that shakes you to the core of the deepest corners of your soul one minute and the very next, sees life go on as if the world actually did not come to a screeching halt in the early hours of that Tuesday morning.
My siblings and I were close, sure, perhaps more so in our younger years. But life took its twists and turns, as it often does. I went off to college, taking with me big dreams and a relentless pursuit of getting out of that crusty, depressing little Ohio town. My brother, while he certainly had dreams and escape plans of his own, came to peace with the blue collar, rough-and-tumble type of path that was before him. And my sister. My dear, helluva stubborn sister, Moriah. She’d rather be anywhere else and nowhere-but-there, all at the same time.
In the last two years since my husband and I moved to New York, the days could easily slip by before I was able to peak my head above the mundane grind that comes with establishing a new life in the Big Apple. I’d call him. It’d take days, weeks, even months sometimes for him to respond. A sporadic text here and there.
“How are you, lil bro? I miss you,” – me.
“Good. Just werking. U movin back home yet?” – him.
Once, it was a 2 A.M. call from him over SnapChat, of all things. I woke from a hazy sleep and hit ignore, scolding him under my breath for waking me (and Matt) up when I had a 6:30 AM work call with India that morning. I’d give anything to go back and answer that damn Snap call now.
Since Matt and I uprooted our lives and moved to New York, I saw Scottie a handful of times a year, at best, when we’d go back to visit. He wasn’t present in the new life we built for ourselves in New York. He hated the city, and probably had some resentment tucked away in that grizzly bear heart of his because of me being there. He had not yet made a visit, although he promised he someday would.
And so, does it make me a wicked person to say that sometimes, it’s easy for me to pretend that the accident never happened? Does it make me sound mad to say that sometimes, even now, I forget that he’s no longer with us?
Unlike my sister, I don’t still live in the same house we once shared. Unlike my mom, I’m not haunted by every diesel truck that goes roaring down the main city drag, screeching its wheels as it pulls out of one of the local jaunts. Unlike my Nana, I’m not still tallying up the damage done. And unlike our dad, I’m not still seeing him there in my living room, wrestling with how the next paycheck would come.
Scottie is not with me in New York. I don’t see him on the corner of Remsen and Clinton.
I don’t hear his jovial laugh haunting me as it bellows through our local Irish pub. Sometimes, these four and a half months later, I forget that he flew full throttle toward the end of his life, foot on the gas, in a way that only he could do.
Is it a coping mechanism? Perhaps.
Is it just denial? Maybe.
I’ve been consoled by so many who have said so many kind words, in awe of the strength I’ve shown. But is it really strength? Or is it sheer weakness and fear of admitting that I’d much rather close my eyes, live my life and see him there, right where I left him. I can hear him. I can smell him. And I can will myself to lovingly punch him as hard as I can, as he teases the shit out of me in only a way Scottie could do.
Perhaps forgetting is the only way I’m able to live my life. To take the numbness head on and, with the grind of New York City all around me, ignore the bitter truth that he’s really, really gone.
Yet here I am, on the road back to Ohio to celebrate what would have been my brother’s 27th birthday.
And I can’t forget. With every passing mile marker along the seven-hour journey, there are memories. Memories that cut so deep, so sharp that it catches my breath.
I don’t forget you today, or any day, my sweet boy. I don’t forget that belly laugh that would consume you and everyone around you. I don’t forget how when you’d see me, no matter how long it had been or how tired you were, you’d throw me over your shoulder and spin me around so fast until every star in the constellation came into focus.
I can’t forget how at nearly every family event and holiday, without planning but fully expecting it, you and Matt would show up wearing the exact same thing. That plaid shirt and those Express jeans. It was the last picture I took of you both together, in the matching teal t-shirts, that would later cement your face in your obituary. One final memoir of your life in print.
They say when a loved one dies, they never really leave you. While I don’t know whether I believe that God allows their spirits to linger or peer down at us over the pearly gates, there is a piece of my brother that has so profoundly changed who I was, what I am today and who I will someday become. Boundless memories that I cannot, and will not, forget.
As we prepare to celibate his life, I will try to forget about the pain of that day. Of picturing him that way when his spirit left his body and made it to the thrown of our merciful God.
Today, I’ll remember you, Scottie. I’ll celebrate you and the all of the years, days, hours and minutes we had together.
I love you, brother. And I’ll be seeing you.