On the 34th birthday of my brother this past Friday, I found myself steering my car to one of my least favorite places to visit.
The cemetery.
It’s at least a bi-annual tradition that feels like an obligation more than a duty. The drive to the cemetery. Looking for the headstone. Parking. Walking through the memorials to arrive, finally, at a place that derives no joy or happiness.
Today is a little different as I can see the site has been decorated. There’s fresh flowers and a card. A cupcake and a cigar. Gifts from loved ones that will only fill a trash can. I feel guilt at having brought nothing. Again.
Without fail, I mumble some sort of greeting as if I’m talking to someone. I sit on the bench next to the matching headstone and am always surprised at how wildly uncomfortable marble is to sit on.
“So, it’s your birthday again. Happy birthday I guess.”
I stand up and walk to the back of the gravestone where there’s a great picture of Phil smiling his dopey grin. Happy and alive.
Staring him in the face is the reminder I never want of the things lost these almost 10 years now. Such an astounding amount of life and suffering has happened since he passed that in many ways, it feels like he never existed.
He feels more and more like a memory of a life I never lived. Like recalling the best bits of a movie you’ve not seen in ages or remembering the best part of the punchline of a joke.
It’s all slipping away and that, to me, is the worst part of him having died so young. I have so much living left to do and the vast majority of it will be without my kid brother there to balance the scales.
It’s an absurd cruelty visited upon far too many to lose the ones we love so early.
But the simple fact is that my brother lived. He existed and was someone worth knowing.
So, in the middle of May 2022, I’ll steer myself back to this place and walk those same steps and mumble some sort of greeting and sit down and hate this damn bench, but I’ll be back.
Because he lived and I have to do the job of remembering.
unpacked thoughts 