Still Gone

From the beginning,this has been a really difficult school year for me.  We got a new superintendent, a new assistant superintendent, a new principal, a new assistant principal, and several new teachers.  I don't like change.  They added a new class for me--one that I haven't taught since I did my student teaching back in 1996!  (And you only teach a two-week unit then!)  Now, of course,  it has become extremely difficult for me.  My students have, for the most part, been very patient and understanding.  They're only kids, but they're good kids, and they try to make it easier.  (I wish some of them would try that hard when it comes to their regular class assignments!)  It's still just so hard.  I feel bad when I'm not my normal sunshiny self, and I feel guilty when I smile or laugh or cut a joke.  (My poor students are used to hearing a lot of punny jokes!)  When I share something about my brother, I feel bad for the students who have lost family members--especially the two (that I know of) who have lost brothers.  I feel like people are judging me when I have a happy moment--like they think I must not have loved him because I found a fleeting smile.

Anyway, like I said, this has been a very difficult school year for me.  I've been pushing myself to make it to the end because once I make it to the end, I can rest.  It will all be okay.  Well, I just realized that, subconsciously, I've been thinking that everything will be okay once I make it through this school year.  Ironically, I realized this the evening of my brother's birthday.  No matter how long this school year lasts or how quickly the remaining time passes, my brother won't be there at the end of the year.  He isn't coming back.  The reality of that still hasn't really soaked in.  Maybe that's because we didn't get to spend a lot of time together in more recent years.  I'm used to going a couple of months without seeing him.  Well, it's been a couple of months.  It's time to see him.  Now, I'm starting to feel that emptiness.  I would say it's not as overwhelming as it was at first, but I'm not sure that's accurate.  It's. . . different.  Just different.  It doesn't usually physically hurt my chest anymore when I breathe, but it's still very powerful.  I don't think I've had time to grieve properly.  I have a job to do.  I have kids to raise.  I have family to be strong for.  Maybe I can schedule in some time in June to grieve.  Ha!  I hope you were able to catch the sarcasm there.  I do realize that grief is not something you can schedule.  Sooner or later, it's going to pull me down under the flood again, and there's nothing I can do to change that.  I just hope that it's not at an inopportune time--though that's when it's likely to happen.  That's the way it works.

I'll tell you how it doesn't work.  It doesn't work like the formula that I've heard.  When a loved one dies by suicide, you experience anger and guilt.  All those articles about the steps of grief make it sound like there's this proven process:  You work your way from one stage to another, and then you're done.  It makes it sound like it's the same for all survivors:  one-size-fits-all grief.  Well, it's not.  It's not even the same for the same person.  This is the third family member I've lost to suicide.  I've not responded to any of the deaths in the same manner.  I thought at first that was because I was so young with the first one, because I didn't know all the details surrounding the second one until years later.  Nope.  It's just like literature.  I tell my students that what you get out of a "text" is determined in part by what you bring with you.  Everything that you have experienced in your life up to that point affects your interpretation of the text.  You can read the same text at different points in your life, and you will get something different each time.  In fact, your interpretations could be very different.  I think that how you experience loss is the same.  It is based largely on the relationship you had with the person lost, whether or not you were on good terms with the person, how he/she died, how old or young he/she was, and it is all affected by what you've experienced in your life up to that point.  I have not cycled through the "steps" in the same manner this time.  In fact, I thought that I wasn't going to experience the anger and guilt this time, but every once in a while, I feel anger rise up.  I keep having to forgive my brother.  If I think about it for too long, I get angry with him because he knew what it was like to be the survivor.  I know that he would not intentionally cause this pain to his family.  That's why I know this was not something that he spent time planning.  It was a spur-of-the-moment decision for him.   How I wish he'd have been able to wait!  I (at the moment, at least) do not feel a lot of guilt because I don't think there was anything I could have done to change things.  As the older sister, I do feel that I failed at protecting my baby brother.  That bothers me some, but I did my best.  At the moment, that is enough.

I feel like I am going back and forth through the stages.  The articles make them sound like bases.  You go from home to first to second to third and back to home.  Nope.  This is not like that at all.  This is like a kid in a candy store--all over the place.  Only, the image you just had of a kid in a candy store was positive, and this is not at all positive.

Yes, it hurts to remember my brother, but at the same time, it brings me comfort.  The things he loved are now bittersweet.  They are more dear than ever before.  I'm glad that we got to spend time together after I graduated from college.  I'm glad that we watched Ice Age in the theater together.  I think that's the only movie that we saw together--just the two of us.  I had planned to see if he wanted to watch the new Star Wars movie--just me and him--when it came out.  I'm not sure I even want to see it in the theater now.

I'm glad that there are people who listen when I want to talk about him.  I need to talk about him.  I want his memory to stay alive. I need his memory to stay alive.