GRIEF IS THE PRICE OF LOVE (REST SWEET ANDY)

Dan, Andy and me, circa 1999.

I got some news yesterday that I thought

I was prepared for but that was just hubris.

Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that we can

start mourning for someone before they leave

and that will somehow prepare us for their leaving.

It's a special kind of human arrogance, 

a kind that I unfortunately have in abundance

and covet like an extra-charming party trick.

It doesn't work at all but I'm sure to keep trying it.

My youngest brother Dan called me several times before I woke up.

I saw the missed calls, the voicemails and the texts.

He'd called my husband too so before we even got out of bed

we called him back on speakerphone together.

Dan started speaking, clearly in shock and doing his best law

enforcement voice.  

Just the facts.

Little emotion except the occasional flash of anger

gone like a fish under the deep water of 

our complicated sibling dynamic.

He has long been an emergency contact for Andy-

someone who gets the call in the middle of the night

when Andy has been hospitalized or they need

a next of kin.

He wears this burden like a badge of honor

not seeing how his sweet soul leaks out of him

with every call or potentially fatal event.

Our brother Andy is dead.

Not in any of the ways we expected him to die.

It somehow makes it more shocking to 

everyone who finds out the details

of his death because there were always so many ways

to die that he considered close personal friends in this game of life.

He's been trying for most of his life

to find a way to numb out the world and he never was 

someone who worried too much about risk.

From walking along rooftops as a small child

to doing the highest flips off a diving board,

he was alive and unafraid.

I have envied him that his entire life.

As my son so wisely told me later

we've been mourning Andy for almost a decade

so the grief we feel for him collectively has become another entity.

My children never knew the freckled, mischeiveous little demon

who refused to sit down, shut up, go along.

They didn't know the handsome, charming young man

with a deep voice who cleaned my whole house 

while he waited to meet his nephew for the first time.

They didn't know the wheezing laugh that couldn't

be contained when a joke hit him just right

or the slow, sideways slant of his eyes

when he was worried about telling you something hard.

They didn't know that he hated grits as a child but loved

to eat them with shrimp as an adult, hands rubbing together in anticipation.

They didn't know his competitive streak or his musical ability

or about the stories he wrote that would welcome you into other worlds.

They know well the hole that his absence has left

and they understand the shock, hurt, confusion, and anxiety

that surrounds our feelings about him.

They have seen the shame he tried to hide

and the frustration from all of us when he went under again.

We have carried those feelings wrapped in a bundle

 as a poor substitue for the actual man.

Now we'll have to grieve the loss of that bundle too,

the possibility that he might die this way or that way,

on a certain day or by a certain means is no more.

There are facts now.

The kind that fill in blanks on official forms but does so little

to sum up a life of a beautiful boy, grown crookedly into a man.

What happened to him?  Everyone wants to know.

I know how it started.

I've been writing about him, about all of us, for weeks now.

Trying to tell the story of how we were made, 

the commandments and laws of our childhood that 

gave us these predictable, curated paths that we walked down

like prisoners towards a scaffold.

I broke our pact, rebelled against the home training,

 made a jail break and didn't have the resources to take him with me.

I could have, should have, was raised as an acolyte to the idea

that I was supposed to give over every ounce of my life force

for the function and service of my family.

It felt like me or them and I chose me.

I wish I had known a different way.

I wish he had felt loved and worthy enough

to make his own path.

I wish he'd escaped first or even burned us all

down to make a place for himself.

He was always kinder than me.

I can't even begin to to sum up the life of 

someone who was both so important to me

and so far removed from me at the same time.

There was a time in our twenties when I thought he might have

made it through, that he might shake off the weight

of everything that was

and make something new.

I cherish those memories-times where we spent holidays together,

shared meals and went on vacations together.

Gathered for a meal at our Aunt's house or

sat on the back stoop of our Dad's porch.

I know enough about addiction to know that he 

did what he thought was best, that he

was handling his life the only way that made sense to him.

I'm angry at him for not wanting to stay.

I wish he'd wanted to stay in exile.

With me.

or with Dan.

or our sister Morgan.

Or with strangers who I don't know

but who would have helped him unwind this mess

of confusion that taught him he was unloved, unloveable

and should sacrifice himself on the altar of addiction.

I wish so many futile, useless wishes.

As far as I know, Andy started using substances to escape

when he was about fourteen 

but he never would have told me if it started earlier.

He never talked about any of it and would shut you 

down HARD if you tried to mention it.

He was fine.

Always fine.

No one believed him but what can you do

when it's clear you are not a safe place for someone?

The past ten years he has been drowning in addiction.

I got glimpses when he came up for air.

One long 3 hour call after his third or fourth stint of rehab

that I couldn't bear to end because it was like he was back

for those few fleeting moments and I couldn't blink for fear of missing it.

I can remember it almost word for word.

Then he was gone again, into the best comfort and safety he ever knew.

Barely focusing on my face at Christmas,

calling me nicknames that never crossed his lips until his thirties,

walking like a fragile old man across a room of stunned family.

So what happened to him?

We barely know and I'm hesitant to put anything into writing

because police investigations change,

people deserve to let that play out

and not have my (unfounded, unclear, emotional) opinions

laid across lives that I didn't know.

There was violence and another person involved, 

also troubled and unwell.

He is gone, finally free and wrapped in the arms

of Creation again.

I'm so grateful I got to walk beside him,

even if it was fractured and not enough time for either of us.