Good. I'm Glad You're Sad

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matthew 5:4)

Almost two years ago, my brother Charley passed away and into the Heavens of peace, tranquility and not far from where we exist now. I can't tell you how many people in his life-both close in relationship and distant in geography- shut down and only wanted to keep me from feeling sadness. Most didn't want to cause anymore pain than I was feeling, most would apologize for "making" me cry, and the majority of people were uncomfortable with my candor and openess to feel. 

I describe the people surrounding his loss in the past tense because those people aren't around anyhow. I speak in past tense because my brother doesn't come up in conversation with anyone outside my immediately family; it is us who inserts him into sentences with nonchalance and normalcy. I accept that most people have moved forward and are no longer coping or grieving his passing, but I am and my Mom most certainly is. 

We live in a sadness avoidance culture that doesn't allow mourning nor the process of it. Without mourning, we can't work through our sadness so why should we bottle up, immediately accept and act as if all is alright? There is no process in grief, there is no sequence. There is no, "what's next and how do I find it and move past it?" as much as people want to believe. Grief is not a phase nor is sadness; they're both humanly emotion that are caused by being human. And without surrendering to our strong agendas, we don't invest in hope, we plan our future without allowing God's plan to unfold. Sadness is part of our spiritual life and we should honor the process that God designed for our human soul. I disagree with "cheer up, it'll be okay" because RIGHT NOW is not okay and sure someday I will feel "okay" but it's not now. I instead encourage you to adjust your personal feelings to your comfort level and accept the reality that loss does happen and it's okay to experience the pain of grieving. 

Just last week I had to have a tough-love conversation with my Mom regarding her obsession to loop my brother's passing in her mind and through conversation with others; she has pushed people away because she's always so angry and because (I think) that they don't want to hear about her grief and her Charley anymore. But because they don't know her pain, they misunderstand her need for support for misery. That's unfair. I encouraged her to channel her anger and guilt by identifying a healthy outlet and occupying her time with a hobby that she enjoys. Very few are still "here" for us and those very few want to see us happy and living again. But I'm not living to make them feel better, I'm living to help myself. 

Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. If we don't allow mourning, we will miss the transformative power of sadness. 

It's the Same As It Ever Was

Anyone I've spoken to who has compassionate in their heart and kindness in their words has told me, "Your brother didn't want to die; he wanted to take away his pain". This, I believe without a doubt in my mind. Had he even strategically thought about the impact his suicide would have on us, he wouldn't have taken his life. Sure he may have thought, "With time they'll be okay", still, as well as I know my brother, I KNOW death wasn't the intention.
However, no matter the times I repeat his last weeks and his last hours and the experience of discovering him...nothing will bring him back. The past has passed. He has passed away and time is passing.
I've resigned to knowing I can't change what has already occurred but it doesn't mean I have fully accepted. You may wonder why I haven't and what's holding me back if the truth is what it is...I haven't accepted that my brother is dead because he lives with me and among my family still, in spirit and in memory.
I look at my hands and I see his, I wiggle my long toes and I see his bony toes, I run my hand across the hairs on my arms and I feel the strength in his forearms as I do the breath in his soul. I believe, without a doubt that my brother is with me when I call on him, when I cry for him and when I rejoice. He's here- I just can't see him with my human eye. My faith sees him instead.

I don't want to feel deeply sad as I do everyday. It's a painful feeling that agonizes me when my mind searches for him or when my reflex looks for him. Oh yeah, he's gone. He reminds me of what's important and how to live a life I enjoy, to reject opposing forces that hold me down rather than empower my inner beauty and to uplift others with no agenda of my own. Sometimes I simply picture Charley in the next room watching TV or in the backyard weeding the garden- these notions soothe me and comfort my state of mood knowing very well that the continuity of my life has purpose.

Life Is What I've Learned, Grief Has Been My Teacher

My favorite person passed away 636 days ago. I will say that I've learned something different everyday, whether it was minimal or grand- like. And I'm learning still, how to live without my brother and how to live with him in my heart.

At the first year someone asked me what I've learned to which I answered "I'm making mistakes and I'm happy to make them". Yet there are so many more emotions I feel within every crevice in my body- I hurt in places I can't describe and cry within nooks of my soul I didn't know existed. Devastation and sadness ache as though a foreign person has taken hold of your being and will not release you; even if you cry "uncle" this stranger has taken the air you breathe and polluted it with such emotional poison that you fear you will never breathe again. But you will as much as you don't believe it.

People who love you make room for your presence and your grief. They silently move with you and embrace you for hugs, for quiet, for joy and for prayer.
My mom came over one morning as I sobbed into the phone that I don't want to live, I don't want to get out of bed and I just want to be with Charley. She quickly drove over, violently opened the front door and rushed to my bed where I my face wept into a drenched pillow and my sight was black in color. She made space for me to cry and held me while I did so, she said nothing and allowed me to unload all my fear, all my love and all my pissed off anger. On many, many, MANY days I wanted nothing more than to lose myself and just disappear only to re-appear in the arms of my brother and with his smile reflected in mine.

My mind is a roller coaster as are my words and my outlook on life- it's realistic to have great days where I'm thanking God for "a wonderful day" and other's I'm thanking Him for giving me the strength to manage my strength and nurture my sadness.

I have learned that life is much more valuable than I once thought it is. I wake up everyday with a different mindset wanting to LIVE and live forthright, live with the intention of living and swatting away anything and anyone who prevents me from reverting back to how I once lived and loved.
Although I thought I loved hard in the past, I am now open to loving most everyone, I'm mom-ish in my ways and hold my daughter with such intent that I know she feels the depth of my present and her future with me. I bask in her face and her delight. Her words are invoking and affect me so deeply that I can't fathom leaving this life and leaving her behind, nor can I imagine her life without me in it. I'm grateful for her existence and thank God for the blessing of her life as I thank my brother for experiencing every moment I have with her from behind the curtain. My brother is backstage with us at every waking moment and is seeded so deeply in everything we do.

My void is everlasting and will never be filled- this I know. I know that my soul won't be at peace until I reunite with my brother and we smile at one another, and embrace and are entwined once again. I know that I get lost in my void and insist that I can't climb out of it----but I do and when I do, I choose to make the most out of the smallest moments and try not to be deterred by life's inconveniences.

I have learned that there is no permanency is this human world except for love. True love never dies nor does it's extension called connection. I have learned that we never know the inner-workings of a job, or a friend, or a family member, or God's plan so I live as though I may die within hours. Call me jaded, call me pessimistic or call me life-induced---if it's not love, then it just is.
I beg my brother to come back but I know that he won't. So you know what I do in his place?
I live.

Death is Apologetic. Life Isn't.

It doesn't matter how you move forward or progress, as long as you move.
Backwards, a leap, walk in circles...as long as my heart is pumping life and my soul feels emotion, I should move. And I suppose that I am, unwillingly so for the most part, but I am.

You're familiar with the centuries-old Christopher Columbus story which states that people were afraid that the world was flat-edged and they'd fall off if the end were discovered? When my brother passed away, I felt that way for at least the first year and change; afraid of the end of the day in fear that life around me would fall off and I'd stay in place. Or I'd get to the end of a night as I watched the sun fold into the sky and the moon glow against the dark and wonder if this day was my end and I'd fall away just like my brother did. One day he was here and the next he wasn't. A year and eight months have passed and his belongings are here, all tangible, and yet he's still intangible. As much as I know no one can come back from death and no one can negotiate a return, my soul years for a miracle that will never happen.

I've begun to meet new people who don't know my past or my inner-present. Who look at me and speak to me with fresh words and newness inquiries. They are meeting the new me, the "she seems normal" me, the woman with a thousand truths and average-sized thoughts, the child who is vulnerable, do-eyed, green with loss and colored two shades of mystery.

"Do you have any siblings?"
Yes. "A big brother and a younger sister".
"Are you and your brother close?"
Yes. "Very". I fight the urge to tear up and my lip trembles and my breath gets short and I change the subject. I fear the fall of falling fast, divulging too much, entrusting my emotions to a stranger and being pitied. If you aren't a part of my when-Charley-was-here life, then you get no access to it. Period.

When I do speak about my brother to new people I share him as though he's alive; my brother does this or that, he and I are each other's backbones, he is a runner, he loves life, etc. etc. until all my etcetera's feel tangible and I pretend to believe myself. My omission is sacred as it is tragic and recognizing the inevitability of reality only makes my sadness worse. I instead lose myself in all of my to-do's so I don't have to think but when I do stop thinking, my brother's face surfaces, blankets my eyes and I clearly see that as much as I refuse to live without him, I am living without him, dragging feet and all.

Something of Nothing is Still Nothing

If what you are experiencing, involved in, receiving doesn't make you happy, then why would more of it make you happy? This is the bain of my emotional existence as I explore a life without my brother.
I kid you not, very often I am lost in my own thoughts people watching or just watching my world as it moves about me and I think Wow, this is life without Charley, which looks and feels quite the opposite of when he was alive and chucking cheesy jokes at me. I continuously wonder how my pain is going to end and when I'll hit a valley that is green in experience and blue with peace. A place I am meant to be with the people for me and the life with me. Partnership- it's what I seek in every relationship I have. Reciprocation-it's what I blindly have faith in. Respect- it's an expectation with a high standard. Sincere love- it's an Aha! sentiment that never ceases to surprise me.

New Orleans Cemetery, April 2015

My now-standards are flight-high and rigorous~ though I find myself making the same conscious mistakes in hopes that this life will stick and I don't have to go any further to find my brother in all the days without him. I believe that we are meant to meet the people we have and are meant to come across very specific people who will supply us with guidance for our next deep breath. We exchange notions, support, mistakes and learnings to take with us as we motion through, mud-deep in life and in love. I suppose my hope (and I use this word loosely because it's yet to solidify much for me) guides me like a blind person with a walking stick...looking for safety and keeping me from severe danger. So, I believe that moments that feel good to me is a last stop. As I interact with someone I keep my eyes alert in search of my brother's nod in approval or throwing me a sign that Yes, Yolie, this is good or No, Yolie, keep moving. I'm looking for inspiration to stay. Work, love, family, my refection, my life, or just one more day. While it isn't my brother's word whose I should live by, I do know what his word and voice sound like, so I listen nonetheless. Mostly, I hear myself berating myself time and time again. I'm not very kind to myself, I admit, and have a difficult time convincing myself that I'm a good person who deserves good thoughts. Yes, I should be careful with my words when I'm alone and my words with other people, and I try, but I fail most times. Suppose this is part of my process-I don't accept because if my brother didn't receive as I have (and am) and wasn't blanketed as I am, why should I. Instead, I filter what feels right and what sounds sincere in true belief that they'll come together in unity and provide me with just one moment of quiet solace.

Human Emotion is Very Off-Putting

Most people would rather deal with logic than with emotion, wouldn't you say?
Up until my brother's passing, I was always a bit rough around the edges-focused on a tough exterior that hardly allowed for much show of emotion-never wanting to show my cards but wanting to show the sincerity I so often fight for. My childhood also didn't allow for unnecessary tears as Dad would discourage, "crying doesn't help" and Mom would be easily aggravated if my brother or I cried in fear of her consequential lash, "I'll give you something to cry for". Sadness, as it was, had no room in our growing lives so we instead closely reached for each other; serving as a backbone for our lives together.

Losing my brother was a fear I always lived with and losing him to death was an intangible thought that would bring me to tears when I'd think about being alone without him. But I would never lose him to himself-he was much "too" of anything to lose.
There's something to be said about death and how quickly it robs our human space of allowance and control; life is a choice we have until we're left with one of two and then there's clearly no choice at all. My brother had a choice when he felt he had none and I am left with a choice to live or to die. Same choice, similar elements of grief and sorrow, different circumstances but same textbook versions of what control signifies.
Simply put, Charley crashed into himself and what he was feeling was clearly so tumultuous that he fought himself until he saw an end to his sight. I envision him in my mind, swinging and swinging and swinging, trying with all that he could muster to make contact with his inner beast, his inner sensitivity. Bashing with such force that he was sure he'd beaten all the fury, all the hopelessness, all the deception out of himself so that his exasperation was well worth the fight and he'd win. But maybe he did win and maybe his inner demon lost. Maybe his suicide was a feat he conquered.

Just as emotion fuels the bodies we house, closure is also natural motivation to have an answer. With an unexpected loss, closure is a therapeutic need that satisfies the spirit and the mind. My brother's suicide offers lack of closure and ensures the absolution of uncertainty. The only person who is certain of the emotional cause is him. If only preventing it were so simple. Tell me why and I'll dispel you of all reason. If only...

As a society we misunderstand emotion and misinterpret the forgiving need to feel...to feel loved, to reciprocate love, a desire to feel wanted and to be sincerely wanted, to feel important and to feel significant, to be understood and very seldom feared and finally to be loved unconditionally by some one person.
We are thrust into this world as naked and raw as God created but it should be our spiritual responsibility to live beyond the constraints of our human existences. Forget logic sometimes and feel.
I love you just the way you are.

The Pursuit to Live A Life I've Always Wanted

One month after my brother's tragic passing, the notion of newness was planted into the broken pockets of my heart. "This is your opportunity to be anyone you want and everyone you've always wanted to be. You're in a fortunate position to start over", she whispered into my crying eyes and across my sleeping daughter's angelic face.
I had no idea what she meant when all I wanted was to lose myself in someone I never was. Maybe I could take up excessive intoxication and drink myself to death or maybe I could explore the lows of being high and binge on street drugs that would numb me medicated. Or even have meaningless sex in an effort to be close to someone without the strings of being emotionally attached. I didn't want to feel anything but feel him alive.

Yes, I could be someone I'm not. Yes, I could do anything because nothing matters anymore.
I wanted to lose myself and escape the pain and devastation of losing my only brother, except losing myself also meant losing him because he is me and I am him~ one person separated by years. When Charley passed away, I can say that I lost my life. There is no one else in my life that loves so deeply, thinks so deeply and lives at his depth as he. I always felt as though life was bearable because I had someone just like me in this life, and that alone was comforting. I could wrap my brother around my soul and spirit...the thought of him felt like I was wrapped in blanket fresh out of the dryer. It's the feeling of all is right in this world. And when he died, nothing kept me tethered to this life, not even my daughter. I wanted to lash out at something tangible, something I could punch my hand into, shake until it broke, beat until there was nothing left...and do it all over again. But life isn't a person and I had no one to hold responsible but myself. Guilt and remorse was instantaneous and occurred in the same moment that I found my defeated brother, lifeless and beyond a sadness I can never adequately explain. Charley may be gone and took his pain with him, but I'm left here to struggle and deal and manage and hate an anger in my gut that I can't shake.

I'm angry everyday. And man, am I hot and cold. I'm easily agitated, my attention span is shorter than that of a toddler's and I cannot find a happy place.

To be honest, I don't want to define happiness.We live with morsels of happiness- doses if you will. Sip by sip, sometimes large gulps. Sometimes we're gluttonous and and take in all we can only to hibernate like bears do because who's to tell when happiness will feel this good again.  So we take what we can get but no matter how much I try to find life in my life, I don't feel the same anymore because I'm not the person I was when Charley was alive and we'd laugh together at his corny jokes. I loved watching him laugh at himself- his laughter and his smile was soothing.
The weight of my brother's death is heavy and drains me of joy. Yes, it's been a year and a half and I cannot function as I'd like. Yes, he's gone and why am I living against his divine wishes for me? Yes, I agree he wouldn't want me to be in so much pain but I am. All of this is a consequence of losing a life that meant life to me, and all of me is changing because of him.

Infect Me With Life

I collect pieces of people like I collect books-hoping to be inspired with a new wealth of knowledge or fill myself with the magic I know others have to offer. Their lives reflect much more motion and routine; absent-mindlessly going through their lives untouched and unscathed by deep sadness. I take as much as I can listening to the way they speak their words and the watch the speed of their eyes in quiet wish to be like them someday...or maybe never be like them- living life in robot fashion. 
There's a large, vacant hole in my family and in my heart that refuses to be refilled or repaired, for the hole belongs to my brother in all his existence both alive and un-alive. I've made room for this sadness that moves around my other emotions like vinegar with water; they don't mix but they maintain their own space. And it's okay that I'm not okay because I don't have to be. It took a lifetime for my brother and I to build the bond we actively nurtured, so it makes sense (to me) that it would take the second part of my life to work through his loss. There is no time limit for grief nor acceptance but what I have accepted is that I don't need to accept to make others feel better about me or to help myself feel better. 
The pain of my brother's death is long-lasting and very prominent- maybe I should accept the confusion...as my friend suggested last week. This tip, I absorbed and thought through, Accept the confusion of losing him and not the acceptance of losing him. 
Another person offered up, "Maybe if you do you, you'll feel better" in an attempt to offer up an alternative to embracing life again. Hmmm, I think I'll try the former. 

Keeping busy is something I've become a master at- occupying my time with life's errands and to do's, hoping that I lose myself in so many things that I have no energy or time left for love...because love hurts. Whether it's exercising, dance class, my daughter Mia, work or grad school, I leave myself in those places each time I touch them and walk away so that I can come back around and pick them up like the bread crumbs of Hansel and Gretel. In short, I know that I am lost and I have no idea how to get back home, a home that includes Charley very present and alive. So instead I wander with aim knocking on the doors of new experience, new lives, and opportunities in an effort to find something or someone's to help me feel semi-alive again. 

People compliment me with words of strengthening encouragement, "You're one of the strongest people I know" or "How do you do it all" and even, "From the outside you look like you have it all together. You make it look easy". 
But what's IT? Life? The emotional turmoil I'm managing? Raising a child on my own AND all the other stuff typical life has chucked at me? Just when I think I can't handle anything more, the stars smile down at me and add another load of heavy dust...and as I think God won't give me more than I can bear, he gives me more and I shrug my shoulders and resign. This is life. This is life. This is life. 

I seem to think that Charley's passing is mine and only mine and I'm affected in this way because he's Charley. And there's never been a Charley without a Yolie or a Yolie without a Charley. I'm participating in my own loss without agreeing to do so, and learning to navigate this solo self with my brother's spirit riding close to my heart. Lost is an okay place for me and it feels safe because you see, being lost means that love will find me again while I'm searching for a way to live. 

Living Parallel to Time

I took more than a hiatus from writing here, knowing very well that my readership severely dropped as has my desire to accept reality. In fact, I make conscious efforts to deny time and the encouraging words, "it's almost been a year and a half since he passed..."  and instead cradle my brother's loss as though it's been a week and a half. 

My brother, young in age and also in spirit, passed into tranquility during the early morning hours of September 17, 2013 while I simultaneously slept in peace. He closed his eyes hours before my Mom called to invite him over for his favorite Mexican breakfast of chilaquiles. His last breaths of human air were desperate and emotional, as they are forgiving and empathetic, and resigned at the devil's hour of heartache and darkness. The world around him unknowingly slumbered at a level he couldn't achieve for weeks, and as a consequence of insomnia, his brain and body also severely suffered from lack of rest and thus, production of healthy chemicals.

The suppressed and judgmental refuse to face the realities of severe suicidal depression, turning their memories off and their eyes away in conscious attempt to forget that their friend Carlos, an honorable and intelligent Firefighter Paramedic, took his own life. He is gone. Just as quickly as my brother surfaces into a happy memory, a sad and awful reminder shoves in and the thought of Carlos is quickly shooed away. 
I know this because I sometimes do this. I think of him, I smile, and I almost simultaneously "remember" he's dead as though I "forgot". I don't forget, I don't suppress, I don't put off or distract myself and I surely don't convince myself "I'll always remember him" as though I won't. C'mon, he's my most favorite person and my only brother. 

My brother was robbed of a lifetime of love and opportunity and happiness and life. He was disregarded and emotionally abandoned time and time again, like a misunderstood foster child who is used and dumped when convenience has worn off. His pain ran deeper than anyone could feel or even attempt to feel. Obviously. 
There is no medication or guaranteed amount of time that would soften his wound as though it were artificial. His love for love ran hard and was far from being juvenile love. His love, my brother's love for anyone and everyone he loves, was unconditional and selfless, like that of the Ancient Greek. 
Love was my brother's grace and also his downfall. He attracted people that needed saving or needed to be rescued, and maybe, if he felt needed he mistook that need for love. I can't speak for him but I suppose I try to think as though I'm him so that I can make sense of his suicide and ultimately, find closure for him. 
Every situation is different but the end result is the same; no matter how much I go over his last few weeks like a movie reel- pause, rewind, play, pause-he still dies and I can't change it. 

A Village of One

I miss my brother. And even now, when I think it or say it or write it, the character count and the space between the sentiment...doesn't suffice. When I tell him I miss you so much, Charley it falls heavy into nothing air and I plead that he is listening. I pray that I'm not talking to myself and I hope that he misses me too. His face or laughter would make my insides settle and smile. I don't feel smiley inside anymore. 

It's been my intention for quite some time to share my love for the village lovingly created by my brother's loss. There've been countless new experiences, new friends, pleasant surprises, rekindled relationships, unexpected encounters and in-my-face realities that are all consequences of his passing. In short, SO much is occurring because he took his life and left us all to fend for him, for one another and for each other.

Still, I miss him because he's gone. And if he weren't gone, I wouldn't have a village whom I love and loves me in return. It's amazing what a people can accomplish when their genuine intent generates love and support. Real support. Not the empty promises of  "I'll come by" or "call me if you need anything" only for these individuals not to follow through. Because if you're like me, I have faith in word and I have faith in people. I trust and am open. If someone disappoints me when I'm truly looking to them during a moment of grief, it hurts. I suppose I hurt myself for having expectations but what sort of friend or family would I be if I didn't meet others' expectations? Reciprocation.

Receiving love and support has surprised me. In so much that my faith in people is strengthened. I never knew I could be so loved and nurtured. I never knew people, my friends, some family and distant friends cared so much about my pain. It's as though the pain of losing my brother created/s a pain for them, too, even though they either didn't know him or didn't know him as well. But they feel it. And they feel my pain. This is wondrous for me, it really is.

When Charley passed away, I naturally looked for him for comfort, and to be told by only him that he would never leave my side and get me through the darkest phase of my life. My soul reflexed for him and he so obviously couldn't take my hands and assure me that he would hold me up. But before I could corner myself into solace and isolation, a village of his friends and my loving web of friends came in and held hands so I could turn in any direction and see an empathetic, sympathetic, I love you face holding tough and holding me. Now my web of love consists of his friends who deeply love him, friends of mine who have bonded even more closely with me regardless of the frequency of my pain and their own fear of loss, and family who hug me with their eyes and sweetly kiss me. Who knows how long this emotional support will last, but I am grateful. I feel secure and padded into space reserved only for me with absolutely no judgment placed on me or Charley.Even if it were one person, a handful of people or someone I barely know, I'd be thankful just the same.
Blessed. There's no secret to getting through grief and loss and tragedy. But there is someone who cares for you and wants to be the person you call in the middle of the night. Choose someone, choose a web and get tangled in it. You'll be glad you did.