Who She Was and How it Happened

 Life is always moving forward and changing around us, even if we don’t take the time to notice. The people in our lives don’t seem so different day to day or week to week. new parts of our communities or our physical surroundings can pop up suddenly but are only surprises at first, then become the backdrop to our lives. Even the seasons change with gradual measure. Time doesn’t stand still.

Years ago our school district opened two new elementary schools, and very suddenly some of the people I was closest to were moving on to different workplaces and stepping out of my daily life. Seeing each other each day turned into occasional text check-ins or Facebook likes, and maybe getting together to catch-up every year or two. They were relationships both sides held important enough to maintain, but even doing that meant redefining what they once had been. 

New times and new faces come along to fill the holes left behind in our lives when shifts like this take place. Maybe it’s brand new people coming in, maybe it’s the people who have always been there coming together to share closer friendships than they once did. When I was thinking about what to write this year to commemorate October 5th, the date of my sister Erin’s far too early death, it occurred to me that most of the people in my daily life now have no idea about her. Only a handful of those around me would have been around during that time, and so many people I’m close to now wouldn’t know much of anything about what had happened, or who she was. Today I’d like to take steps toward rectifying that.

Erin was the third child in our family, the youngest, three years younger than me, almost to the day. She shared a bedroom with our older sister. She played the trumpet in high school band. Whenever we took family trips, she rode in the middle of the back seat. She played Star Wars with me using our shared collection of action figures. The days and evenings we spent playing soccer in the yard helped her develop into a player skilled enough to be a captain of her high school team.

She worked a short stint as an EMT, then worked as the activities director for an assisted living community after finishing college. She loved being around the seniors there; it’s ironic now that she never had the chance to see what she’d be like as a little old lady herself. As much as she loved her seniors, she loved dogs even more. As shy as my boy Freddie is after whatever scary misadventures he endured in life before he came to live with me, she would have won him over and made her love him through sheer force of will.

I suppose she was around thirty when she developed a persistently annoying cough. Her friends convinced her to get it checked out, and after a time we all learned she had a slow-growing cancerous tumor the size of a racquetball in one of her lungs. The lung was removed, and after her body had adequately recovered from the surgery she began a long series of radiation treatments. After that was done, she had a grace period lasting one entire follow-up appointment of being declared in remission before tumor spotting began to appear on her remaining lung. Her doctor put her on a brand new medication and set an appointment at the end of the summer to see how the tumors responded. Holidays and parties were more frequent during those months, with guests traveling great distances to see her. The drug did nothing to deter the tumor growth, and by the end of that summer we knew it was a matter of when instead of if that her life would end, and the cancer would be responsible.

Our family was suddenly thrust into that position of oncoming tragedy, the kind that when it happens to other people is easy to feel both pity for what they’re going through and relief that it isn’t happening to you, except this time it was happening to us. There was nothing we could do to change things, so we relied on the smaller ways we could help her that we had control over instead. There were many weekends when I would have her energetic dog Milo staying at my house. I promised myself I would try my best not to treat her any differently than I had before, as much as the awkward darkness of the situation permeated our every interaction. I began writing her eulogy more than a year before her funeral, and revised it more times than I can remember. 

Erin outlived her oncologist’s expectancy prediction by several months, which may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things but was precious time for us. She worked with a deacon she knew from the church across the street from where she lived, the same church we’d grown up attending, which connected to the same elementary school we’d gone to. She planned out every detail about her funeral, down to selecting her pallbearers and choosing the shirts they would wear. In her final days we were all there, staying in her home, grabbing hours of sleep when we could. We were at her side in her final moments, when her body, which had been contorting itself to struggle for each fraction of a breath it could draw, was finally at peace. 

My sister, our parents, and I have all gone through personal struggles over the years as we learned how to adapt to a life without her. I even got a novel written out of the emotional purge that became so necessary. Even though it’s been seventeen years now, the emotions never completely fade; you learn to make them part of who you are. Because of that, after all this time, she’s still a part of our lives, and, in what would be a great relief to her since it cancels out her greatest fear about dying, she has not been forgotten. Hopefully today the memory of who she was still spread just a little wider.

Day 14: Blackbird

Today would have been my sister's 50th birthday. 

This is the song that will be playing in my head today as I think of her.

I hope the people who found their way here will listen to this song, and pay attention to the lyrics.

"Blackbird" by Alter Bridge

If She Were Here

Last year when I wrote my annual memorial post to mark the date we lost my sister Erin — 16 years ago now — I listed things about everyday life for all of us that she had never been alive to know about. It put a cold perspective on how long we’ve been without her now. Here in 20-frickin’-20, everything comes back to all the forms of disaster that have manifested during this calendar year. There are more than 7 million cases of Covid-19 around the world, and more than 200,000 deaths (and counting) in America alone. As of the past few days, one of those millions of cases even includes our esteemed president and several of his best administration pals. I’ll refrain from going beyond that other than to say the problem has been with us for a long time and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. It got me thinking: What would it have been like if Erin had still been around to get through this with the rest of us?

She would have been the one driving out to deliver things to her friends and family confined to home to keep them safe. She liked knowing she was able to help people. She enjoyed being relied on. She once held up a shuttle bus at the state fair parking lot from leaving so she could help an older woman with a walker get on the bus. 

She would have taken mitigation very seriously since she worked with seniors, and wouldn’t have wanted to be unavailable to them.

She wouldn’t have been following the politics of the election too deeply, but she would have known enough about what was going on to hate the president as much as she had hated any other bully she’d ever encountered, and she would have been taken over by the personality combination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

The cousins in our family who live locally and have small children would have had her coming over occasionally, probably bringing some simple new toys to leave behind, and playing with them in some socially distant way she had thought up on her own. The kids would just see this as a fun new game, and would probably refer to it as something like “The Erin game.”

She’d be unhappy about the Vikings and their 1-3 record, and would have opinions about Kirk Cousins. 

She’d visit Jenny and me on occasion, but primarily to spend time with our dogs. 

When our family would have some kind of event coming up like a birthday or holiday, she would figure out where and when we were going to celebrate and then give each of us our directions, and possibly tell us which of our masks were expected to wear.

She’d be on Facebook because so many of our cousins are, and her timeline would be dominated by memes. Half of them would be critical of the job the president has done (and likely based around jokes related to poop or farts) while the other half would be inspirational sayings and poems with calming nature backgrounds.

When she would come to my house (to see Freddie), she would occasionally bring me some kind of gift she had noticed in a previous visit that I needed. This would be indicative of both her wanting to show kindness to people, but also a way to keep the fires of sibling rivalry burning brightly, something like “The last time I was here I noticed that all of you kitchen towels are completely worn out and suck, so I got you some new ones.” This would be her way of showing she was aware of me and my surroundings, but also her way of sticking it to me to highlight how incapable I would be of having nice towels without her help. Like I said, sibling rivalry. 

The thing about reimagining what the present would be like with her as a part of it was something I didn’t even realize until I was nearly done thinking my way through it: Every moment of my picturing her with us now saw her as she had been before she was sick. I didn’t see the Erin with the incessant cough or the crippling fatigue or the heavy knowledge of her fate. I saw the person she’d been at her peak, healthy and strong, living the life in front of her and struggling to figure out what was going to come next, like so many of us do each day. 

It was good to have some time with that version of her again. 

May 14: The Long and Complicated Origin Story of Following Infinity

It was the fall of 2002. The school year was only weeks old when my family got word that my younger sister, Erin, had been diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. The two years we had between her diagnosis and death was the most painful time of my life, but had also been filled with extraordinary love and beauty. During that time, I decided I was going to chronicle all that was happening. I don’t remember if I had planned to turn what I was working on into a memoir someday, but eventually I did. I called it TWO YEARS TO SAY GOODBYE. I was proud of what I came up with, but as with any piece of writing I had done much earlier in life (this was my mid-thirties, and I’m now a week away from turning fifty-two), it’s difficult to look at without picking apart how poorly written and self-indulgent it feels. Because of that, it’s probably never going to see the light of day. 

Around the same time, I had the idea rattling around that I also wanted to write a fictional counterpart to that real-life story. Since I was focused on writing for a middle grade audience, I thought about writing from the perspective of a character about the age of my nephews, all of whom were pre-teens or little boys when Erin died. The problem was finding a story to tell. 

Then I noticed this picture hanging up in my house. And I really thought about it.

From what I can tell, it’s a photograph. I don’t think it’s any special work of art; in fact, I once saw a copy of it stashed in a rack with other poster art at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. The picture had been the last Christmas gift Erin would ever give me. She included a note about how that scene had been her happy place, her point of focus when everything had become too much for her to deal with, and that she couldn’t imagine a more peaceful spot anywhere in the world. She found a copy of it and wanted me to have it. I referenced the picture and what it meant to her when I wrote her eulogy. It’s still hanging in my living room. I doubt most of the people who ever come to my house understand its true significance.

The thought came to me that if Erin had been given the chance to visit any spot in the world before beginning whatever journey she had ahead of her on the way to eternity, she definitely would have stopped by that lake and sat on that dock to take in the peace and quiet, just for a moment. It made perfect sense to me. 

From there, the story began to grow. 

Originally it was about a song. My main character, a boy of twelve years or so, kept hearing the same song pop up all the time. It was a favorite song of his recently deceased aunt and it referenced some city out in California. The boy was haunted by this until his grandfather agreed to take him out to that location on his motorcycle to see if they could find anything. A kid that age who lost his aunt, with a motorcycle-riding grandfather… the characterization and the situation were both too close. 

I tweaked things. Same main character, same age, but this time he had lost a much older cousin, college-aged, who had been something of a mentor to him. There was some place in Florida they had visited with their families years earlier, and a particular spot they’d seen that had led to the two of them having a significant moment of some kind. Things came together with the girlfriend of the cousin agreeing to bring our main character on a trip to visit this place, so he could reach some sense of closure.

Again, it didn’t work. I had taken four or five runs at trying to draft this, and it never found any traction. I put the idea in the story vault to maybe revisit again someday. It stayed there for years. 

Back in real life, there was a year I had a girl in my class, Kiana, who had a younger brother named Kyle who was very sick. He was only a first grader and had already gone through his own cancer battle. Everything about losing Erin was still very raw for me, and I felt a draw to this little guy. I would joke with him when I saw him in the hallways, and it didn’t take long before he started joking right back with me. Knowing him and knowing what he was going through led to me knowing his sister better, and from a perspective that I didn’t usually get to know my students. I became fairly close with both of them. 

Two years later, Kyle’s illness returned. He wasn’t able to be at school following some treatment he’d had, so arrangements were made for him to be tutored at home. I moved quickly to make sure I’d get the assignment.

I worked with him on and off for most of that school year, if I remember it right. I saw the good moments and the not so good ones, and I saw so much of Erin’s experience reflected in what he was going through. After school ended, I even had a day or two when I'd go over just to visit. We’d hang out in the basement and play video games. He’d apologize repeatedly for being so much better at them than I was. 

The last day of his life turned out to be only days on the calendar away from the last day of Erin’s. It was hard to ignore the parallels, and made the grief that came with losing her fresh again. The story I’d shelved years earlier crossed my mind, and it hit me: I had been trying to tell it wrong the whole time. I was trying to filter my grief through a character that was too similar to my nephews, so everything I tried to write was too close to our story. I had to take myself out of it if I was ever going to be able to create a fully-realized character. It was still my story, but it couldn’t be about me at all.

I saw that all along, the character never should have even been a boy. The only way I could build a character that wouldn’t have any trace of me would be to write about a young girl. And instead of making it an aunt or an uncle or a cousin, writing a girl would allow me to write about losing a sibling, and to be honest about the pain that came with that. I thought about Kiana and Kyle, and decided to make the lost sibling a younger brother, to mirror my losing a younger sister. The characters wouldn’t based on the two of them — I knew them fairly well for students, but not at the personal level where I could have done that even if I’d wanted to — but I did give my characters, Molly and Michael, names that started with the same letter, as a tiny tribute to the two of them and what they’d gone through.

Weeks after this realization, National Novel Writing Month started. I wrote the first draft of 54,000 words in a little over three weeks. I did a couple editing passes and thought it was perfect and ready for an agent. My query letter got some notice from a handful of agents, and even a full request, which was a turning point: It became the moment that convinced me I should keep writing when I was ready to give it up altogether. That agent passed though, and nothing happened to the manuscript for a long time, other than being passed around between family and friends. A few years later, a cousin told me about a contest that eventually led to me working with my agent, Carrie. When she loved everything about my story that I wanted people to love, I knew she was the right one. Then she had me rewrite most of it and basically add an entire second act that hadn’t been there, which it turned out to desperately need. Carrie has a frustrating habit of usually being right. 

So there it is. If you’ve read the manuscript and you’re one of the people hoping along with us to see it published someday, now you know where it came from (and that you can thank Carrie for most of part two even existing).

Since today, May 14th, is Erin’s birthday, I thought more people should know how all of this came together. Her biggest fear about dying was being forgotten. If (WHEN!) this manuscript becomes a book and sees the light of day, I hope that even if readers never know Erin as anyone other than maybe a name in the dedication, they’ll still somehow carry a part of who she was with them. 

A Farewell to Kings

I was introduced to most of my music through peer pressure. I went from spending 6th grade at a tiny Catholic school to 7th grade in the public junior high, and quickly learned that much of your status came from the bands you liked. When I figured out the music the junior high hallways taught me I should be listening to, I worked to catch up. I began listening to classic rock radio. I joined the Columbia House Record and Tape Club more times than I can remember. I drew album covers on the brown paper bag covers wrapped around my textbooks.

Back then in early, early 80s, AC/DC was the apex predator in the hallways and boom boxes, with other now classic rock staples like Foreigner, Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon, and even Billy Squier earning what seemed to be permanent spots in the Ring of Honor. Another band with an unquestionably deserved spot on the list of our musical titans was Rush. 

I learned about Rush mostly from the radio, since they had a good number of songs deep in rotation from previous albums. They weren’t the kind of band you’d dance around to while playing air guitar in your bedroom, but the kind you’d actively listen to. All of that complicated music was coming from only three guys — Alex Lifeson, playing insane guitar lines, Geddy Lee, playing bass with his hands and using foot pedals to operate keyboards while singing at the same time, and Neil Peart, a drummer who clearly was not human and played like he had nine arms. Being a drummer in the junior high and later the high school band, I was drawn in to Neil Peart’s playing. I knew to ever play like him was beyond my capabilities, but there were still things there to try and learn. 

In our microcosm of the world, Rush was mostly known back then for the song “Tom Sawyer,” and primarily for the drum solo. I recently told a colleague that every music fan from my generation had air-drummed to “Tom Sawyer” at least once, and I feel confident that’s a truth. The song, and the solo, were that important to the time.

Rush has been one of my bands for decades. No matter which musical era of the band an album represents or what influences were on display in the music, I could always find something about it to like. For the longest time they were mostly just present and reliable, resurfacing every year or two with an album of new songs or one of their many live recordings. After a few decades, you come to realize you’ve connected with them more deeply than you have with you most of your other favorite artists.

They are still the only band I’ve seen twice on the same tour, once at the Minnesota State Fair and nearly a year later at The Gorge in Washington state. My friend Erik and I would amuse ourselves during marching band practice, dancing with our drums the same way Geddy Lee danced with his bass guitar in the video for “Distant Early Warning.” When I drove out of the city after presenting the summary paper for my Master’s Degree, hearing the song “Marathon” come up on my car stereo was the moment it sank in that I was actually done. The song that ran through my head in the days surrounding the birth of my first nephew was “Manhattan Project,” mostly for the lyric, “All the powers that be / and the course of history / would be changed forever more.” It seemed appropriate then for the first baby born into my family, and it was. When I had to think up a four-digit passcode on my first smartphone, I used 2112. While talking with my friend Staci at an after school happy hour, I mentioned the only thing I wanted for my birthday was Rush’s newest album, “Vapor Trails,” and I didn’t think anyone in my family was going to buy it for me. She did instead. I played through it for the first time in my classroom. Years later, when Rush released a Blu-Ray concert of the final show of their final tour before retiring from touring, that same first nephew, now an adult, gave it to me for Christmas. It came packaged with a keychain — a small Gumby figure, wearing a Rush t-shirt. I still keep it with my keys today.

It was bittersweet when the band announced their retirement, because you know they meant it. Neil Peart had been drumming at a level of virtuosity that had him widely recognized as the best drummer in popular music for four decades, and his body was wearing out. I couldn’t blame any of them for retiring, and respected them for making it an all-or-nothing decision: If one guy was ready to be done, they were all done. The way I saw it, they deserved it after giving the fans so much music for so many years. The word was that Neil was ready to spend more time writing — he had been the primary lyricist for the band throughout their career, and already had a few books to his name as it was.

The artists who produce your favorite songs become companions for you, communicating with you through the ideas and perspectives they’ve shared through their art, and the opportunities they’ve given you to interpret these ideas, either literally or through any number of degrees of metaphor. Sometimes you’ll find something buried in a song you can apply to your own life and beliefs, and sometimes, and just as importantly, you’ll find a soundtrack for the key events of your life, even elevating events from the mundane to significant by the addition of their music. Their songs become a language of shared experience with other fans; you only need to drop a song title like “Red Barchetta” for another Rush fan to know how that song affected you.

Now that I’m in the back half of middle age (at best), I’ve reached a time when the musical heroes of the generation ahead of me are becoming the ones we lose and miss. When I first heard that Neil Peart had died earlier this month, after a mostly private struggle with brain cancer, a shadow crossed my heart (to quote the man himself). I had not been as strongly affected by the loss of a musician I admire (I won’t say hero, knowing how Neil would have bristled at that term) since Freddie Mercury died in 1991. And I named my dog after that guy. 

The weekend after his passing, I watched “Beyond the Lighted Stage,” a documentary about the band that I’ve seen a double-digit number of times. The movie ends with a scene of Alex, Geddy, and Neil getting together for a “business meeting” at a nice restaurant in a private room, which amounted to little more than the three of them joking and laughing like the friends they were. When I think about losing Neil now, one of the first things I think of is how hard it has to be for those other two guys as they miss their longtime friend. 

The relationship the fans like me had with Neil was nothing like that, but it was just as real. Knowing that he’s gone now, that we’ve lost someone who worked so consistently hard to be as perfect as he could at what he did, leaves the world feeling a little less pure.

15 Years is a Long, Long Time

When my sister Erin died, fifteen years ago today, her biggest fear was that the people in her life weren’t going to remember her. This was a ridiculous thing for her to worry about, of course. However, this is the year I can kind of understand where she was coming from. It wasn’t so much the idea that we’d all forget she had ever been here and a part of our lives, but after so much time passed and the world would move on and carry us (but not her) along with it, she wouldn’t be the same presence for us she’d once been. 

Truthfully I think that can be said about most of the people in our lives, though. Just in the years since she had passed, I’ve had relationships that, at the time, had seemed close enough that I felt for sure those people would always be with me, regardless of what paths our lives took. Things absolutely did not go that way, though; even though a number of these friendships had been some of the strongest of my life time, they’ve faded into little more than social media echoes. Relationships are living things that both ends have to work at to keep alive, and it can be a cold realization to bear witness to how easily things can disappear. Sometimes it can come from physical distance, or mental distance, or emotional distance. Distance itself isn’t enough to wrap things up; my closest friend lives two time zones away and has for at least a decade now. Not every relationship is strong enough to survive, as powerful as it might seem while it’s happening. Life happens the way it does, and sometimes it sucks. 

I never worried about Erin fading out of my life. I have millions upon millions of formative memories of her, along with the memories held onto my my parents, my sister, some of our longtime friends, and so many others in my family. Unfortunately, but realistically, one of the things that keeps me tied to her now is this quietly pervasive pain that will never go away. I’ve said before that in grief, you aren’t sad all the time but the sadness is never far away. It’s an undercurrent to everything you do and think. It comes with a crushing weight, but it also twists into a version of nostalgia when you have happier moments and feel more capable of facing it. You can tell yourself you’ve found peace with the loss, and I believe it’s possible to reach a point when you truly have, but finding peace isn’t the same thing as being released from the pain. I know a lot of people seeking to be comforting, with the best of intentions, would try to fall back on the Thoughts and Prayers chestnut of “She’ll always be with you,” but I promise you that 99.985% of the time it does not feel that way. She is decidedly not with us anymore. Her time with us came to an end, and the rest of the world continued to turn.

I can honestly say that fifteen years out usually means it all doesn’t hurt anywhere as much as it has before. But times like the days or weeks leading up to important days, like this anniversary, can come back and smack you in the head like a boomerang you forget you had tossed. Fifteen years feels like a landmark anniversary number, and that got me thinking about how different the world is for those of us still alive since the time we lost her. Just to give you a perspective on how much distance there is now between our losing her and an understanding of how hard the pain can hit if it can still breach that distance on occasion, here’s a list of things I thought of while I spent a good amount of time lying awake in bed early this morning — fifteen of them — that Erin never lived to experience:

*She never knew anything about my brother-in-law David.
*Between my sister, my parents, and me, we’ve had a total of seven dogs in the family that Erin never met.
*There is not a single book I’ve written that she had the chance to read.
*The house where I’ve lived for well over a decade now, and the house where our parents are spending their retirement? She never saw either of them. 
*The iPhone didn’t exist until three years after she died.
*Facebook had still been the domain of a few thousand college kids.
*She didn’t know anything about the car accident that came so close to taking our sister.
*The first Iron Man movie was still four years away, so she never saw any of the “Marvel Movies.” (Thor: Ragnarok and Captain Marvel would have been her favorites, and she would have giggled at never scene with Ned in the most recent Spider-Man movies.)
*She left the world when people still dominantly bought compact discs for their music.
*She probably never even heard the name “Barack Obama.”
*She never saw an episode of “The Office.”
*She never had the chance to read a single of the 500+ posts I’ve written on this blog.
*She missed the entire academic career, from kindergarten through starting the freshman year of college, of my youngest nephew.
*She never heard Green Day’s “American Idiot” album. To be fair, she might not have been all that interested in it anyway, but since it was released only weeks before she died and I listened to it almost constantly during that time to help purge the anger and frustration I was feeling, it would be impossible for me to disassociate that album from that specific moment of my life.
*She wasn’t at either my 40th or 50th birthday parties.

The relationships Erin had with those who love her did not end, despite the ultimate distance being between all of us now. We’re living in a different version of the world from the one we experienced with her, though. That can be a lot to think about.

Day 14: The Ghosts of Christmas Eve

It took me some time to figure this out, but I think I finally have: I’m over Christmas.

The music, the movies, the commercials. The traditional specials coming on. I tire at the anticipation, the effort that goes into trying to find the perfect gifts for the people in my life and then tracking them down. I’m ambivalent at best about teacher presents.

I hate the cold weather, even if it’s usually only chilly with cosmetic snowfall. I enjoy the cozy feeling of getting out the jackets and hats and boots again, and the warmth of the furnace, the car heater, or the added layers of blankets that make it so easy to fall into spontaneous naps. But that’s all more of a side effect of hating the cold.

There are too many treats and parties. Being reminded of traditions can be uncomfortable. Decorating the tree and the house has become largely mechanical. Digging out all of the ornaments that have so many cherished memories attached to them doesn’t trigger the same nostalgia anymore.

I don’t hate getting time off from school, though. That’s great. That might be the exception.

I promise I’m not getting Grinchy in my later-middle-age. I didn’t used to be so down on all of this. I used to love it. I still go through the motions and routines of it all, but none of it has the same feel as it used to. It was all great family time and memory-building, and adding new bits of history each year.

It’s hard to feel celebratory about all the good family times and family memories when the family isn’t whole anymore.

By the way — Happy Birthday, Erin. Wherever you are.

Fourteen Years and All the Dogs

Let's see if I can remember the whole list....

When we were very young, in the days before and the earliest days of going to school, Erin, Jenny, and I lived in a house filled with corgis. We each had our "own," even though our ages ranged between zero and seven during these years. Jenny had Misty. Mine, for reasons of which I remain unaware, was named Dingo Fritz. Erin's was Barky. Even at such a young age, Erin felt such a bond with the dogs that more than once she would be caught snacking on handfuls of their food. (She was barely old enough to walk though, so we're not taking about large hands.)

We moved a few years later, and sold off all the corgis except Lady, the original. Even though she had been kind of scary when we were little kids because she did not suffer foolishness from any of the other dogs lightly, she became the friendly family dog once the competition for attention had been removed. We had her for a good number of years. 

When Erin was at the upper end of elementary school, our dad brought Arthur home one day. A complete surprise for everyone but him, and suddenly we had a westie puppy exploring our house and settling into our lives. He was our family dog and we all loved him dearly, but Erin, who never in her life met a dog she didn't become friends with, had feelings beyond that. One of my enduring memories of her is how hard she cried the day we moved her up to college, because it had been so hard for her to leave him behind. 

The three of us were adults by the time Arthur's days were finished. Jenny's family had brought in their own gigantic bundle of golden retriever, Molly, and not long after her came Erin's Jack Russell, Milo, who was brought in to the family to immediately fill the hole that Arthur's passing had left behind. About a year after that, I brought my boy Spencer home. The day I picked him up, Erin drove me there so I could hold him in my lap on the drive home and start bonding with him. Erin was also partially responsible for his name: When I told her the short list of names I was considering and got to Spencer (saving it for last, since that's the one I was already leaning toward) she said, "Well, it doesn't matter what you name him now because that's what I'm going to call him!" Decision made. 

The years sped up, as they tend to do when you and your siblings advance through adulthood. Spencer and Milo became the best of friends, since Milo was a regular dog sitting guest at my house. Molly grew old and passed on, and was eventually replaced with Willow -- once the puppy of the family and now the old man. It's been enough years that I can't say with certainty whether or not Erin ever had the chance to know Willow, but of course if she hadn't she would have loved his quiet little unassuming self as much as they rest of us. Mac came in not long after and became the other half of Willow's pack -- Mac was definitely in charge of things, mostly because Willow didn't care much. 

Milo was living with our parents until his time came. Tiny puppies Shamus and Butch came to their house next; Butch the little black and white Swiffer pad, and Shamus the furry potato with legs. They got along with all the other dogs well enough, and we had a general sense of truce between the five dogs in the family for many years. Erin didn't know them all, but it was impossible to imagine them not loving her back as much as she would have loved them. 

Then it was Spencer's time. He died such a slow and horrifying death that it broke me, and scared me away from getting a new dog for seven years. The day I brought him to the vet to put him to sleep, his doctor let me have the exam room to myself after his quick and peaceful end. While I stood there trying to wrap my head around how hopelessly lonely I was going to be, I remembered something I had heard at a book reading once, about how some people believed that sometimes the spirits or energies of dogs will remain with their masters after the pass. I didn't exactly believe that to be true but in that heightened emotional state I knew I didn't want that for him, so I looked at his body and at the floor by my feet, and, just in case, repeated over and over and over: "Go find Erin. Go find Erin. It's okay. Go find Erin now."

Years later Toby came to Jenny's family, sixty pounds of muscle and enthusiasm stuffed into the body of a boxer. Not long ago little Mac reached his end, and in less than a year equally little Riley moved in with Toby and Willow, and, in his own mind, took over the house. 

Then there was Freddie.

The shy and frightened little boy coming off a mysteriously hard life, who spent a summer's worth of days and reruns of The Office playing in the background to learn how to accept and welcome and eventually embrace his new home. Literally nobody in the world can understand how happy he is here except me, since he's still shy around other people. He's getting so much better, though. Every day he opens up a little more is a small triumph. 

But maybe, if she's ever able in whatever existence she's found now, maybe Erin's able to check in on us and see what we're doing. If so, I know she'd be so interested in everything Freddie has been up to. For all I know, she could have had a hand in steering him back into the arms of his foster mom on the day he came to live here and immediately ran away. She'd see his naps, she'd laugh with delight when he grabs his chicken or his fox out of his crate in the morning and trot into the sun room with them, and she'd smile when he curls up like a little football as he's getting ready to sleep. 

There are so many things I don't know about what life would be like with Erin now if she had been with us all this time. One thing I do know though, with absolute surety, is exactly how desperately she would love my little boy. Knowing that makes me happy and sad at the same time. 

Day 14: The Nexus

My sister Erin was a huge “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fan. I was too, but not anywhere close to the same degree. She read the novelizations. She kept a framed photo of Commander Riker on a shelf in her bedroom. She attended a convention, and found her way to the right building by following someone dressed as a Klingon through downtown Minneapolis.

When the show ended its run on TV and the movies began, it was a big deal for us. The first one, “Star Trek: Generations,” wasn’t the epic we had hoped for, but it was a good fan movie and we still enjoyed it. I watched it again recently. With the perspective of a different filter, I noticed it’s actually a layered story about growth, loss, coping with regret, and the stalking passage of time.

The story is centered around a villain trying to find his way to something called The Nexus, a place that exists outside of space and time where someone could live out eternity in their own ideal. One character who had been there described it: “It was like being inside joy, as if joy was something tangible. Never in my entire life have I been that content.” When Captain Picard ends up there later in the movie, he sees a reflection of the life he never had, getting the chance to live out all had sacrificed in the name of his career: a wife, a loving family, a home, and the return of the young nephew he had recently lost. 

With Erin’s birthday approaching, it made me wonder what The Nexus would have been like for her. For all I know, wherever or whatever she is now has her existing inside something that maybe wouldn’t be so different. What would her ideal have been? 

It didn’t take a lot of thinking to put that together.

She’d be at our cousin’s cabin in Western Wisconsin on a warm summer Saturday night. There wouldn’t be any humidity or bugs to bother anyone. The windows would be wide open, letting in just enough breeze to keep the air intoxicatingly comfortable. The clock would say somewhere around 2 AM. She’d be standing in a kitchen filled with our cousins, all laughing to they point they could barely breathe. The entire house would be filled with the smells of classic 2 AM food: garlic cream cheese dip, chips, frozen pizzas, special k bars. Little ones would be asleep in nearby bedrooms, but in the Nexus they’d be sleeping soundly through the raucous laughter in the kitchen and the pounding music coming from the guitars and drums and keyboards and singing in the basement.

Our nephews would be there, and she’d be able to enjoy them both as the small boys she knew and the young adults she never had the chance to see, because time wouldn’t matter there. Every dog our family ever knew, ranging from Lady, the corgi we had as kids, to whoever might be coming home with me next month, would be in and out of the house, playing, chasing resting, all getting along perfectly. 

Even though close to one hundred people would be filling the house there would be plenty of room, both inside and in the yard under the stars, for everyone to sit. There wouldn’t be any awkward moments, no stress or anxiety waiting for our return to the real world, no pain to endure; just everyone together, our own generations, surrounding and enjoying each other in a night that would never have to end.

As the movie comes to an end, Captain Picard convinces Captain Kirk (yep, they’re both in this) to leave The Nexus with him so they can save the population of an endangered planet. Picard appeals to Kirk’s sense of duty; the need to know he’s doing something that makes a difference ultimately tips the scales for Kirk and sends him back to a reality that matters.

That need to make a difference, as selectively as I choose to see it, is something I probably allow to drive my decisions more than it should, so I felt a small twinge watching that scene. It brought back something of a thought experiment that had been going around when the movie was out: What would The Nexus be like for you?

I won’t get into great detail about my version, but I’d imagine that reality would be made of different intersecting points from a number of unexplored timelines or parallel universes, collecting the elements of a life to fill in the blanks of what I don’t think I have here or believe I’ve missed out on. I have ideas about what that might look like, but, much like it had been for Picard, I don’t think I’d know for sure until I was actually there. 

All I know for sure is that Erin would be there. And I could see her again. And we’d both be happy. 

All That's Yet to Come

The past few days have been filled with deep thoughts for me, coming from several different directions.

Most of the things I post on Facebook usually fall into one of two categories — either pointless jokes to try and make people smile, or more thought-provoking topics that might generate conversation. I made two posts this past week that sparked the kind of discussion I’m usually hoping for in that second category. One was contemplating the nature of true friendship, while the other evolved into a lengthy chain of exchanged compliments.

Following that, there was an evening this past week, after the end of the school day, when I was caught up in a deep conversation with a colleague. She had spent much of the past year working through a serious illness, and apparently a comment I made had helped precipitate a small emotional breakthrough for her. We spoke about it for quite some time, comparing our experiences from different perspectives, and considering how seemingly random occurrences can become formative influences in how we think about our lives.

Yesterday was kind of a big day, being the birthday of a close friend. It was a milestone birthday of sorts, since it’s the second one to have come and gone since he died last year. Similarly, today is also kind of a big day, because it’s a milestone birthday for a very close cousin, one who is more like a sister to me, and I know the idea of her birthday will be a presence throughout my day. 

Last night I finally made time to watch a new music DVD I have, the video of a concert I attended with one of my best friends a couple summers ago (we were even in one crowd shot for nearly two seconds!). It was a performance of one of our favorite bands reuniting to play one of our favorite albums live, for the first time ever. It’s an album that holds great personal meaning to me beyond just enjoying it musically, because it provides so many connections to experiences and memories related to the time my sister was dying.

Later today I’ll be at the visitation for the mother of a friend and colleague. Knowing this is coming up gives the time before the vaguely mournful feeling that follows the passing of any loved one, but as my friend has said repeatedly over the past few days, her mother had lived a long life and was ready when it was finally time. I try to see situations like this as, at least partially, a chance to celebrate the life that has passed instead of grieve it, but the fresh pain of the loss and the pervasive sense of absence that follows always carries unavoidable moments. I know she’ll be feeling some of those in the coming weeks.

So, like I said, it’s been a week of deep thoughts. This got me wondering: Why is it people tend to associate the idea of deep thoughts with things more related to death and sadness than happiness and life? Maybe when life is going forward as we expect it to, we don’t have to think about it. We don’t have to question what happiness means because we’re just caught up in how it feels, and we’re glad to be in that state. We know we’ll eventually have to navigate more challenging times, but in those better moments it’s enough to know that happiness is defining our present, whether or not we take time to acknowledge it. I think that’s why the compliment post generated the reaction it did. I don’t know if we typically allow ourselves the chance to either appreciate the things happening to us in those better moments, or the positive things that the people surrounding us bring into our lives. We just get used to accepting they are there.

On the subject of birthdays, and of over-reflective thinking, I’ve got my own landmark birthday coming up this spring. It doesn’t have me feeling old or spinning off into an age-related crisis of any kind; I’ve come to think of getting older as having another year of life my sister never got to experience. Birthdays are usually low-key and relatively unimportant to me, at least when they’re mine, but this one feels like there’s intrinsic meaning beyond what I would assign to it. I’m not sure it means I have to celebrate it with a fancy sheet cake covering three square yards or anything, but (much to what I’m sure is nobody’s surprise) it has me reflecting. Not so much contemplating things like missed opportunities or regrets, even though many of both are scattered throughout my younger days. Instead I’m thinking more about the time ahead. I don’t believe so much in the idea of a bucket list, but I can certainly think of life experiences I would still like to have, that because of procrastination, hesitation, inhibition, self-doubt, or circumstances at least partially outside of my control have eluded me so far. I’m hoping to make this year into one that could start me on the path of exploring more of those things.

Maybe achieving that could be as simple as proactively deciding for things to be that way. Maybe it could come from having been alive long enough to reach the point where I finally know better. 

Maybe it will come down to being bold and vulnerable enough to do things outside of the norm, like purposefully acknowledge the better moments, or just offering people the compliments they deserve which would usually remain unspoken.

A New Way to Live

My sister Erin’s death happened long enough ago that instead of being able to automatically call up how many years it’s been, I have to remind myself of the dates involved to do the math. This October 5th, the difference between 2017 and 2004 makes for thirteen years. 

When you lose someone, there’s a period of time — I’d say a month, give or take a few weeks — when everything about the loss is so new with so much related activity that you don’t completely have time to process what’s happened. The visitors are almost continuous. The to-do list keeps growing. The many things that need to be taken care of serve as a kind of distraction. Eventually though, those things are resolved. The visitors are less frequent as people return to the attention their own lives demand. The items on the to-do list get checked off, while fewer new tasks are added.

The aftermath of a death isn’t something people talk much about. It’s uncomfortable, knowing that even though we’ve paused our everyday lives to help friends and loved ones deal and cope and survive the immediate shock and the abrupt redefinition of their lives, there’s only so much we can do to help.

I was in this outsider position not long ago. Very recently a friend of mine, someone I’ve known for a good number of years and have worked with, lost her son. Everything about the life her family had been leading changed overnight. 

I went to see her at the visitation to try and be supportive, but felt tongue-tied and hopeless after waiting in line to see her and her husband, knowing there wasn’t anything I could say that would change what happened or make things even slightly better.

The part of the visitation that stayed with me the most was seeing her other two children there. I’ve never met them, but between the times she’s mentioned them and the dozens of pictures I’ve seen of them on Facebook, I’ve put together my own rough ideas of what they’re like: The high school daughter, wide-eyed with a graceful, glowing smile, always surrounded by friends; the middle school son, looking ready for any opportunity to charge his way through discovering and experiencing whatever he can about life; both of them with enough of a glint in their eyes to hint at the potential for low-grade mischief just beneath the surface.

When I saw each of them at the visitation, I felt like I’d been stabbed. So much of the pain and confusion I had to navigate during the time Erin was sick, and after she was gone, came surging back. I knew my friend was experiencing a pain I couldn’t relate to, but I also had a pretty good idea as to what those kids were feeling. Losing a sibling far earlier than you should reasonably expect is a singular kind of pain. Your brothers and sisters are the only true lifelong companions you get. You expect they’ll always be a part of your life, in some manner. When you lose one, it's like losing a limb — you’re off balance, and you feel as if you might not ever be whole again. You have to adapt. You have to start over. You have to find a new way to live. 

When Erin died, I had no road map, no context for what I was going through, no idea what it was supposed to feel like, or what I could expect, or how I was supposed to come back from it, or even if I ever would. The whole world and my place in it was a collection of empty pages, and I had no tool to write with or any idea of what to say.

So today, for the benefit of those two kids, and to commemorate the death of my little sister — which she will always be to me even if she was thirty-three when she died — I’m going to share what I’ve learned about surviving the loss of a sibling. Erin’s biggest fear was thinking the day might come when we would forget about her. Sadly she’ll never know how wrong she was about that. If I pass on what I’ve learned about life and death to some others going through the very first stages of a similar experience, that might be another way for her memory to live on. 

All right, kids. Here we go. I could write thousands upon thousands of words on this subject, and have literally written the book on it, but I’m only going to address certain points, mostly the ones I wondered about when I was at the same place you are now. Take this for what you will, and maybe it will help:

*It’s okay to be sad. Sadness isn’t bad. You won’t always feel it, but it won’t ever be far away. It’s coming from the love you have for your brother, even though he isn’t physically with you anymore to receive it. 

*It’s okay to laugh and have fun and enjoy your life. Doing this isn’t being disloyal to his memory in any confusing way.

*Every new thing will hurt for awhile. Every time you have to face all of this from a different point of view, it will hurt. I promise this kind of hurting isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Those new hurts that come along are going to be a part of how you hold onto him, and keep his memory fresh and whole.

*You won’t ever completely stop hurting, but you’ll hurt less. Time really does heal. You’ll miss him and you’ll think about him every day. Thirteen years after losing my sister and I cannot think of a day she hasn’t at least crossed my mind. Most of the time when she does, I smile at the memory.

*You won’t forget what his voice sounded like. You won’t forget how he laughed.

*You could very well always have things you wonder about, all the universal “what-ifs” that might not ever be answered. When things happen later in life, you’ll have times when you’ll wonder what he would do or think or how he’d react. Those questions won’t go away, but you’ll eventually learn to be okay with knowing you won’t get satisfying answers. You’ll have enough in your memory to fill in the blanks on your own.

*As time goes on, you’ll discover that you remember some of the tiniest, most seemingly random things about him with extraordinary detail. 

*Don’t be surprised if you catch yourself eventually developing some of his habits or mannerisms. My laugh gradually evolved to echo qualities of my sister’s that weren’t there before.

*When you catch up to his age and even pass it, he’ll still be the big brother.

*You’ve gone from being the three of you to the two of you. The relationship the two of you share is probably going to change. That’s what happened to me and my other sister. However you would describe the brother/sister relationship the two of you have today, it’s going to amplify into something new and stronger, because no one else on Earth will ever completely understand what you’re feeling about this the way the two of you will share.

*It’s okay to talk to him when you need to. If doing that feels awkward, go out at night and say or think what you need to while looking at the stars. Trust me, it works. 

*It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to move on. Moving on does not mean leaving him behind.

*He will always be a part of your life. I don’t mean that in a well-meaning, comforting-thoughts way. I mean the time you had with him will be a constant presence throughout your lives.

*You can still love him. 

*There is a new normal waiting for you, and for your family. It might take some time to find it, but it’s out there.

*Finally, despite everything I’ve said here, I have to tell you: There is no one road map. What I went through and what you’re going through are unique experiences in many ways. There’s only the path that’s going to unfold in front of you, and the new situations that present themselves, and whatever you need to do to handle them. But that’s okay. No matter where you go or what you do in life, you are always going to carry him with you.

Mother's Day on May 14th

Today is a special day for my family. Of course it's Mother's Day, like it is for a lot of other families as well. For us May 14th is also my younger sister Erin's birthday. This year she would have been 46.

We spent the weekend down in Polk City, Iowa for a cousin's wedding. The wedding and the weather were both beautiful. The ceremony was held at a quiet and scenic golf course which was walking distance to our hotel. It was a big enough crowd for us to get to see a lot of people we wanted to see, but not so big of a crowd that it became an overwhelming event. All in all it was a very pleasant weekend. 

But Sunday, today, is Mother's Day. Usually we celebrate Mother's Day with all of us getting together for dinner, a few gifts, and probably a birthday cake to acknowledge Erin's absence. Even if Mother's Day doesn't fall exactly on her birthday, it's usually within a week. This year they landed on the same date though, and on a day when we were out of town.

I mentioned to my mom at the dance last night that it wasn't going to be much of a Mother's Day this year, with all of us spending most of the day driving home and resting up after the weekend. "That's okay," she said, and patted my cheek. "You can come out to the house sometime this summer and fix everything on my computer. That will be my Mother's Day." 

Of course I'll do that. I'll also take her to lunch that day, and maybe even take her to see a movie that afternoon since we always talk about doing that in the summer but never seem to get around to finding the time. I think this Mother's Day will be okay the way it is. There's no way Mother's Day will be happy for her when it intersects with the date of Erin's birthday, so I think it's best to let her have time to just remember and miss her, like we're all doing to some degree today. 

So instead of trading texts with Jenny to figure out which house we'll have dinner at and who would be buying what present, I'll just say Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Jenny and I love you, along with Sue and Jean and Dan and Mark and Chris and John and Danny, and any other number of our cousins we saw this weekend and all of the ones we didn't get to see. You've certainly had a secondary mothering role in all of their lives as well. 

We're all still here, and we miss her, too.

Tending to the Existential Wounds

When I first started thinking about what direction to go with this post, it occurred to me that my sister Erin's death has now happened so long ago that none of my current students have ever shared time on Earth with her, by at least two years. Even though she's been gone that long now, there are still those two big bookend dates marking her birth and death when our family will put aside time to remember her. Of course those days aren't the only times we ever think of her or miss her; I don't think any of us ever get through a day without her crossing our minds at least a few times.

It shouldn't be a surprise that music is one of the emotional triggers that brings me back to her. I had a long collection of songs I relied on while she was sick and following her death, which I've come to associate so heavily with that time that I can't separate them from what I was feeling and going through back then. These weren't just prototypically inspirational songs that could be adopted by anyone (although there were a few like that). These were meaningful songs that served as my companions during that time, the ones I still can't hear without experiencing emotional surges. They're the songs that fill my head with visuals from life, helping me reconstruct memories with a degree of sensory detail I probably wouldn't be able to recall without their help. 

Here are ten notable ones from that list, and why they mattered so much.

In Loving Memory - Alter Bridge
"And now I come home and it's not the same / Feels empty and alone / I can't believe you're gone."
Mark Tremonti, the band's ridiculously talented guitarist, wrote this powerful song after the death of his mother. I think I can safely speak for my sister Jenny when I say that neither us can listen to more than a minute of this song without having the tears start burning into our eyes. 

The Rising - Bruce Springsteen
"Sky of blackness and sorrow / Sky of love, sky of tears / Sky of glory and sadness / Sky of mercy, sky of fear / Sky of memory and shadow / Your burning wind fills my arms tonight / Sky of longing and emptiness / Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life."
If I remember the timeline correctly, Bruce's "The Rising" album, marking his reunion with the legendary E Street Band, was released the summer just before we found out Erin was sick. I was going to see him in concert with some friends weeks after her surgery, silently pleading on the trip down to St. Paul that the show would provide me with some respite from the stress dominating my life, and also offer a generous share of the emotional guidance I had come to expect from his music. He didn't disappoint.

Bartender - Dave Matthews Band
"If I go before I'm old / Oh, brother of mine / please don't forget me if I go."
In a song that I've always interpreted as contemplating mortality, the strongest connection I have to it has always been in that opening line.

The Spirit Carries On - Dream Theater
"Move on, be brave / Don't weep at my grave / Because I am no longer here / But please never let your memory of me disappear."
Taken in context, this song is the emotional culmination of a journey traveled by a character in a landmark concept album. Taken as an independent song, it's practically a hymn. I made sure this came on in the car as I drove my parents home from Erin's funeral.

Jesus of Suburbia - Green Day
"To live, and not to breathe / Is to die in tragedy."
Green Day's "American Idiot" album was released only weeks before Erin's death. I was listening to it nearly nonstop, both because it's a great album and because the anger and frustration that permeates so much of it -- this song in particular -- amplified the fear and depression and hatred for the world I was feeling at that time. On the surface that probably doesn't seem like such a good thing, and in a lot of ways it wasn't. But it also was a great catharsis. 

A Long Day's Life - Kevin Gilbert
"Oh no, I'm lost and all alone / Battered and broken and scarred to the bone / Oh love, you've never been a friend / But if you're still listening I'm here at the end / of a long day's life."
It bothers me that the album this song comes from, "The Shaming of the True," is so obscure that most of the world will never get the chance to know what an incredible work of art it is. This was one of the songs fighting for space in my head throughout our family trip to San Diego, when we brought Erin to see the ocean one final time. (Little known fact: The real-life events that inspired the seemingly unreal climax of "Following Infinity" took place on that trip.)

Don't Give Up - Peter Gabriel
"Rest your head, you worry too much / It's gonna be all right / When times get tough, you can fall back on us / Don't give up."
This song has a great back and forth between a depressed and discouraged Peter Gabriel beating himself down, and another singer (Kate Bush on the studio version, Paula Cole on the live one) pointing out how much love and support there was around him, if he would only bother to acknowledge and accept it. I tried to use this song to encourage Erin when she first learned she was sick. I didn't see how much it applied to me just as much until years later.  

Solitary Soul - Spock's Beard
"Got a lot of breezes left to blow / Where I'm going I don't know / Got a lot of heartache I don't show / What it's like, you'll never know / To be the solitary soul." Listening to this song was like a tuning fork for my sadness. Again, it's part of a concept album and sung by characters telling a story, but I related to the themes far too well. All the time I spent putting up walls to keep people at a distance during this part of life, this song would show what it sounded like inside of that. It's also worth mentioning that during the second to the last night of Erin's life, Jenny and I sat up all night watching over her so our mother could get some sleep. We looked through a guidebook provided by the church to choose which readings should be used at her funeral. We chose the first one because it was about sheep and Erin liked sheep, and we chose the second because Charlie Young had read it at Mrs. Landingham's funeral on "The West Wing." The only other clear memory I have of that night, other than being the last time in my life I was alone with my two sisters, was listening to this song on my iPod and feeling it at the core of my being.

Stranger in Your Soul - Transatlantic
"There, walking into walls, piercing through the pain / Here we are, reaching through the rain / I almost caught a glimpse, brighter than the sky / A child grown, a stranger coming home." It's just too hard to quantify the importance of this song. Whenever I think about existential healing, I think of "Stranger in Your Soul" as where the idea originated, at least for me. It's a song with several parts to it (it's length shows up in iTunes as exactly thirty minutes) that goes through so many melodies and themes it's really more accurate to call it a composition instead of a song. While so many of the songs on this list were about dragging emotions like sadness or anger to the surface so they could be confronted, this one was purely about healing.

Running to Stand Still - U2
"You gotta cry without weeping / Talk without speaking / Scream without raising your voice."
This song has always been more about the overall tone than the specific meaning for me. If you've never heard it and you're curious what the musical expression of watching someone you love have to suffer would sound like, find it online and give it a listen. 

My memory of Erin is still so strong that my mind will often trick me into thinking about her as an active presence in my life, much in the way I have so many friends and family who live long distances away and I only get to see or talk to infrequently. But then I'll remember that in the cases of those people I still have the option and opportunity to catch up with them, and that isn't the case with her. That realization comes back with the same sinking feeling it always has, even this many years later. But not with the same gravity it once did. 

Even if she isn't here anymore though, she still is an active presence for me. As long as I hang on to my idea of her and have clarifying memory triggers like the songs I've listed above, she'll stay that way.

Day 14: Reflections on a Retroactive Bucket List

For some reason, the idea of a bucket list keeps working its way into my May blog posts each year. Even though I love to structure my life around To-Do lists, I’m not a big proponent of bucket lists. Mine wouldn’t be all that noteworthy since I really only have two or three things I still want to do before I die. Mostly I’d rather just wait and see what happy surprises life has in store for me instead of try and manufacture events that would have equal chances of living up to expectations or not. For example: Three years ago I wouldn’t have known Port Townsend, Washington even existed, but the day trip I took there while visiting some friends in the area was wonderful. I never would have put visiting Port Townsend on a bucket list, but I’m happy I had the chance to go there.

Today would have been my sister Erin’s 45th birthday. The last of her birthdays she was here to celebrate was her 33rd. I know quite a few people who are in that early-thirties stage of life right now. On days like this, I'm reminded when I think about those people how, regardless of how accomplished or established in their lives or careers they might be, 33 is still so relatively young. However, as in the case in so many other examples besides how a life is spent, quality can matter just as much as quantity, if not more. From certain perspectives, it would be absolutely fair to say that Erin did more living with the time she was allotted than many other people have with theirs, including me. 

I was thinking about this a month or two ago, when one of those “copy, paste, reply, and tag ten other people” lists was trying to get some traction on Facebook. It included a collection of life moments ranging from the mundane to the extraordinary that people might feel worthy of inclusion on a bucket list. Knowing I’d be writing a May blog post for Erin’s birthday, I copied that list to see how many of the things on it are things she would have done, or maybe would have done without my knowing, or likely would have done:  

*Fired a gun: I have to think she did, at least once.
*Skipped school: Faking a sick day in elementary? Of course. Skipping classes in college? Absolutely. Taking off with friends in high school? That I’m not sure about.
*Watched someone give birth: She was there for the birth of at least one of our nephews.
*Watched someone die: During her life she worked both as an EMT for a time, and as the activities director in an assisted living center. It wouldn’t surprise me if she'd been there for someone else's final moments.
*Visited Canada: I honestly don’t know. I can’t think of a reason she would have had to.
*Visited Europe: Yes. More than once.
*Visited Las Vegas: At least one time, and I know for a fact she came out ahead.
*Visited Los Angeles: Maybe? I think?
*Visited New York: I don’t think so. I really think she would have made big enough deal about it afterward if she had. Maybe stopping there on a layover, but I don’t think ever as a specific visit.
*Seen the Grand Canyon in person: I’m not entirely sure about this one, but something sticks at me saying that it happened. Maybe I’m remembering wrong after so many years.
*Flown in a helicopter. Yes to this one. I was beside her.
*Cried herself to sleep: I’m confident about this one happening. 
*Recently colored with pencils: Well, not recently. But if the adult coloring books that are such a big deal in certain circles these days had been popular fifteen years ago, she would have had a stack.
*Sang karaoke: Most definitely.
*Paid for a meal with coins: Wouldn’t surprise me.
*Made prank phone calls: Without a doubt.
*Laughed so much she cried: Literally hundreds of times. 
*Had a pet: Absolutely.
*Jet-skiing: I can’t see how she wouldn’t have at least tried it.
*Waterskied: I’m sure she at least tried.
*Parasailed: She most certainly did, in an instance that ultimately inspired a key moment at the ending of “Following Infinity.”
*Camped in a tent: Many times. 
*Jumped out of an airplane: Yes. It was a goal of hers to do this before turning 30. She brought our aunt and uncle with, but didn’t tell any of us in the family about it until afterward because she didn’t want our parents to know until it was done.
*Gone to a drive-in movie: Many times, usually falling asleep in the back of the family station wagon before the movie was over.
*Eaten just cookies, cake, or ice cream for breakfast: Well, of course. 
*Stolen any traffic signs: I don’t think so. But there were a couple years of dorm life in college where there was a lot going on, and since I didn’t live on campus when she was at school I can’t account for all of what may have gone on.
*Been to jail: No. And seriously, who would put this on a bucket list anyway?
*Ridden a rollercoaster: Many times.
*Stayed in a hospital: Certainly more than she would have cared to.
*Donated blood: Probably.
*Gotten a tattoo: Yes, with less than a year to live. Right on her butt. And of course it got infected, which her oncologist found amusing.
*Driven over 100 miles per hour: I’ll go with probably. I know she drove close to 80 once with a hyperactive Jack Russell terrier sitting in her lap, which should probably count for just as dangerous.
*Lived on her own: I don’t think she ever did. Out of the three of us siblings, Erin was the sore thumb extrovert. She needed people around her.
*Been to a Broadway musical: I don’t think one actually on broadway, but many touring shows, to say nothing of the cast recordings she had in her slightly bizarre CD collection.

It would have been nice to have her with us longer. It would have been nice to know who she would have been at forty-five years old. But it’s still nice knowing that she used the time she had as well as she did. 

Why I'm Not Completely Excited About "The Force Awakens"

I saw Star Wars for the first time with my entire elementary school on a field trip. I still remember walking the five or so blocks to the single-screen movie theater in our tiny town, sitting in a row with all of my fourth grade buddies, getting blasted back into my seat by the opening fanfare and being completely overwhelmed in the best of all possible ways when that Imperial Star Destroyer flew over my head and kept on getting longer and longer and longer. I was immediately hooked.

Both of my sisters were in the theater that day as well. My younger sister Erin was as susceptible to overindulging in enthusiasm as I was at that age, and for the two of us, Star Wars became as much of a focal interest as anything else during whatever years remained of our childhood. As far as I could tell, our older sister Jenny probably liked the movie just fine that day, but instead of sharing in the same nerdery overdrive that had taken over Erin and me, she ended up quietly enduring ours. Erin and I collected the trading cards, starting with the hard-to-find blue set and continuing through red, green, yellow, and beyond. Star Wars was the only comic book I ever subscribed to. I had a yellow Star Wars t-shirt with the two droids on it that I wore until the picture had all but completely faded away. Erin had earned a blaster just like Han Solo's as a reward for (allegedly) breaking a bad habit. I once gave Jenny a gift of an R2D2 necklace, which she wore one time to pose for a picture on her birthday, and probably never touched again. Erin hung an Empire Strikes Back movie poster on the wall in the bedroom she and Jenny shared. I'm sure Jenny loved that.

Of course we collected the action figures: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Ben, Vader, C3PO, R2D2, Yoda, Stormtroopers, Tuskan Raiders, Greedo, Walrus Man, Power Droid, even a Jawa. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, and I'm just as sure if Erin were still around she'd be able to point out which ones I'd overlooked. In our house, action figures weren't precious things that stayed in plastic collector's bubbles, but they lived up to their name. My Han Solo action figure was without a head for most of its tenure in our collection; in what I now recognize as an important developmental moment of my writer brain, I invented a backstory that explained how his head wasn't actually missing but was just invisible, and how he was on a quest to change things back. Erin had a landspeeder for our figures to ride around in, and she also had a Death Star play set (which was NOT the Star Wars equivalent of a Barbie Dream House). Outside of the expected possessive older brother/younger sister arguments, we always shared everything equally since the hundreds of adventures we came up with would be better served with the entire collected cast of characters.

We had the soundtrack album, and this was back in the days when vinyl was the standard. It was a double album, and side 4 was easily the best. When friends would come over, we'd play it loud and tip back the chairs in the basement against the walls so we could pretend we were manning the guns in the Millennium Falcon while escaping from the Death Star. I still remember the moment we were watching TV and saw an ad saying Star Wars (I still cannot, to this day, refer to it as "A New Hope") was going to be shown on broadcast television. Understand, these were the days before even a VCR in every home, and in our house the announcement of that upcoming broadcast was bigger than Christmas morning.

For the longest time after "Return of the Jedi" had come and gone and the story seemed to be done, Star Wars became just part of the cultural background. There were always rumors that teased episodes 1, 2, and 3 coming someday, and maybe even episodes 7, 8, and 9 when the actors from the original trilogy would be old enough to tell the story, but eventually the anticipation of this ever happening died down. The movies were always worth a re-watch if they ever showed up on TV, and that was good enough.

I was thrilled when the original trilogy movies were re-released, even if the digital "enhancements" weren't necessarily improvements. When "The Phantom Menace" came out in 1999 to launch the prequel trilogy, Erin and I waited in line at least an hour one Friday evening to see it. It was great at the time because it was more Star Wars, and a throwback to the seed of so many of our childhood adventures, but, as time has proven, the new trilogy didn't measure up to the original. When I got my first computer, one of the first games I bought for it, and in fact ordered the same time I ordered the computer itself, was Dark Forces, a Doom-clone set in the Star Wars universe. Not long after that I bought the X-Wing Collector's Edition, which ate up more of my free time than I will ever publicly admit. Erin didn't have a computer that could run these games, and she was noticeably jealous about it when I showed her how they worked.

In a just a couple of days I'll see "The Force Awakens," the first in the new trilogy that my nine-year-old self hoped for so many decades ago. The first reviews are in, and so far they're overwhelmingly positive. The trailers have been dominating YouTube for at least the past month and they look amazing. J.J. Abrams has a great track record as a director, and since he's about my age and grew up in the same haze of Star Wars love I did, that makes me think this movie could be close to perfect, and something like all of the adventures my little sister and I had come up with while playing on the sandy hill in our yard.

But she isn't here anymore, and she's not going to get to see it. Because of that, no matter how great the movie turns out to be, no matter how dreamlike the experience of seeing it the first time after decades of hope and anticipation will feel, something about it will always be slightly less for me than it should. I fully expect I'll love the movie. It would have been nice if she'd had the chance to love it, too.

Erin and the Boys, Eleven Years Later

As many people who have followed this blog for awhile probably know, October 5th is the date my sister Erin died, eleven years ago now. Each year on this date, or at least as close to it as we can all manage, our family will get together for an evening of remembrance. We do it for ourselves, but we’re also honoring one of Erin’s wishes at the same time — her greatest fear in facing death was the idea that she might be forgotten. Of course, regardless of how much all of our lives have changed over the past eleven years, there was never really a chance of this happening. 

But this time every year my mother rounds back to this same thought, because she so desperately wants to know that her three grandsons have managed to hold onto memories of the aunt they loved so much during the time they had with her. 

As I’ve done a few other times to commemorate the date and do my part of keeping her memory alive, I went back to the memoir I wrote (and shelved) that chronicled our experiences during her illness and death and dug out a passage to share, this time as much about the boys as about Erin. Fair warning — it’s not exactly an easy read, so steer your way around it with the page breaks if you want.

*****

The following day would be my last at school for awhile, though I didn’t know it at the time. I warned my student teacher Stephanie it was likely the day would soon come when she’d show up and there would be a sub in my place, and there weren’t any promises I could make her about how much notice she’d have beforehand. Days later the responsibility fell to her to tell my class Erin had died. Actually, let me clarify: The responsibility did not fall to her -- this college girl took it upon herself to tell them when others were too uncomfortable or unable to do it. 

I left right after school and spent a few hours at Erin’s that evening. She was in bed the whole time, in and out of sleep. She woke briefly while we were there and saw through her glazed stare and oxygen mask that Jenny and I were with her. Ben and Matt came with their dad to visit that night as well, after leaving John with his other grandma. For John, dying was what happened to an action figure when it was stabbed by another action figure, or fell into the lava that seemed to follow his unfortunate collection of action figures everywhere they went. Dying has no permanence when you’re only three, and even though he knew Erin was dying he didn’t really get what it meant. Matt had a better idea, but it was still a bit beyond him to completely grasp. Ben, however, was all too aware of what was happening. 

Erin’s eyes opened a little when she saw the boys were there, so they were able to sit on her bed and hold her hands. Matt was a little bouncy, holding the Special Baseball she had given him while he sat beside her. He picked up on the somber mood of the room but was still his irrepressible five-year-old self, happy to see her again. When I think of what a sensitive kid he was, it’s almost a blessing he didn’t fully understand what was happening. 

Ben took it hard. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding Erin’s hand after she had fallen back to sleep, after Matt had followed everyone else back out to the living room. Jenny sat beside him. Ben had the tendency to go internal whenever something was bothering him, and was good at forcing a smile when he didn’t know how else to react. I couldn’t really fault him for not knowing what to do. I had never lost anyone as close to me as Erin was to him. 

Jenny saw through it though, and told him it was okay to cry. I was sure he would just sit there smiling unresponsively, pretending to be brave, but of course she’s his mom. As soon as she gave him permission, he broke. Still holding Erin’s hand, he slowly tipped in and buried his face in Jenny’s shoulder, and all I could hear was the too familiar sound of heaving sobs, and all I could see was the involuntary hunching of his shoulders. 

Erin woke and saw he was there so they talked a little. Jenny got up to give them some alone time, but I stayed back in one of the corner chairs to watch; being his godfather and knowing he was about to lose his godmother amplified how protective I felt toward him. They had a good conversation for awhile, but as Erin talked longer she stopped making sense; the morphine-induced dementia was taking over, and Ben started getting uncomfortable since he hadn’t encountered it before. I hurried out to tell Jenny what was happening, and she called him into the next room to give him a way out. When he said goodnight to her, I’m sure at some level he knew it was going to be for the last time. 

*****

I have a photo collage frame hanging in my hallway, showing each of the boys with Erin at some point in what would turn out to be her final year. I chose these pictures specifically since I feel they were so representative of who they each were at that time, and what their relationship with her was like. 

Erin and Ben, either New Year’s Eve 2003 or New Year's Day 2004. Here you see that uncertain smile he’d wear sometimes, as Erin held on to him. I’ve always had my own ideas about what she was thinking about here, but I can really only speculate.

Erin and Matt, Thanksgiving 2003. Matt’s a high school junior now. You can tell here what a nonstop kind of kid he was at this age, from his little grin and the legitimate twinkle in his eye. Erin was definitely smiling for the camera here, but she was always happy whenever he was around.

Erin and John, Summer of 2004. We were all at a cousin’s graduation open house, and when Erin arrived — a little later than the rest of us because her energy level was waning — John toddled down the driveway to meet her when he saw her coming. This is one of my favorite pictures.

Only the boys themselves could ever say how much they still know of her, whether that would be a deep library of memories, or a few highlights mixed with an emotional echo they can’t quite source, or a vague and general idea of who she was strengthened by the things the rest of us share. I know Ben and Matt have some memories. But John was only three when Erin died, which made him a little older than I had been when my grandpa Joe died. I never really remembered anything about my grandfather, but throughout my life I’ve heard the stories and I’ve seen the pictures. I’m not sure how important it is that I didn’t have memories of him that were my own, because I still know who he was and what he meant to so many people I love. That’s always been enough to make him a part of my life. So if that’s what time holds in store for any of the boys when it comes to remembering Erin, I think that’s okay. In the end, she’s still in there for them somewhere.