Past Present and Future

I am going to graduate school in the next year. I am getting a degree in counseling with a specialized certificate in grief. I need to help others to keep from sinking into anger or sadness.

I wouldn’t have even considered this career path without your death, but I think it’s important for me and you. You were in the military, fighting for something you believed in. I had never had that kind of call and then when you first left my pain was too loud to hear the call. But over the past year what has started as a whisper has become a battle cry that I have to listen to.

It is the first time I’ve felt like I am really truly on the correct path. Don’t get me wrong, I’d take having you back over my own calling. But since you insist on staying away I might as well be doing something to help others.

I just wanted you to know.

Love and miss you

I cannot say, and I will not say

That he is dead, he is just away!

With a Cheery Smile and a wave of the hand

He has wandered into an unknown land.

And left us dreaming how very fair

It needs must be since he lingers there,

And you - oh you, who the wildest yearn

For the old-time step and the glad return.

Think of him fairing on, as dear

In the love of there, as the love of here,

Think of him still as the same, I say.

she is not dead - she is just away.

- James Whiteomb Riley

It’s hard to imagine the years where those days go by with barely a flutter. After years like this one it just doesn’t seem possible. But they happen. I don’t know how, but they do. The idea 9 years have passed since I’ve seen your smile or heard your voice seems impossible. But it is. It’s been 9 years... how am I supposed to survive the rest of my life?

There is no perfect way to go thru the stages of grief. Some days we go through them all in one day. Sometimes we spend years on one of them. How you grieve and at what pace is valid and if you need to talk to someone, good for you, if you’re managing, good for you.

Grief is a verb. It changes the rules and circumstances at a whim. Adapt or don’t. You are doing well. Even on your worse days. You lost part of our past, present and future in a single day, in a single exhale of life. However you feel at any given moment is okay and good. If we eat as well as we can and drink a lot of water, our hearts will keep beating and some days... that’s as good as it gets.

I remember mom’s face, then her scream, then me trying to think clearly enough to take the next step, to get to you. Mom held her bible the entire way to the airport. I cursed at god the entire way. Daring him to take you, then begging him to take me instead. Even then, even when we didn’t know how bad it was, I was angry that is had happened at all.

There was a thunderstorm while we were on the plane and I remember it being the first time I’d felt calm since the phone rang. That song from next to normal played on repeat in my head.

“Do you wake up in the morning and need help to lift your head?

Do you read obituaries and feel jealous of the dead?

It's like living on a cliffside not knowing when you'll dive.

Do you know, do you know what it's like to die alive?”

I had no idea how little I felt like this in that moment compared to the rest of that week. We finally got to the hospital. The waiting room was filled with people even tho it had taken us well over 20 hours since the accident to be there. It was that moment I knew how loved you were, not just by us. Those ppl would become my life line. I didn’t know that yet though. In that moment they were just strange faces and my only thought was “Jordan”.

You were so damn cold. You already felt dead. I would learn later that it was because when someone had to be resuscitated they keep them cold to make it easier on their heart.

Seeing you pale, cold and as lifeless as I’d ever seen you, made me realize how bad it was. I realized for the first time in that moment that I was probably going to lose my brother. I didn’t cry until I was in the shower at the hotel. I know mom and dad must have heard but I thought I was hiding it and they never said anything. It would be the last time I cried for months....

I’m doing so well though. I truly am and I just wish you were here to see it, here to be proud of me in person. With this new job I know I’ll find myself thinking about you more and more. Being an EMT means being with people as they die, as they’re at their weakest, as they are in pain and all I can find myself thinking is... the EMT/Paramedics that were called the night of your accident so could have easily given up. 15 minutes in the water then 17 minutes of CPR. Do you know how easy it would have been to for them to not be able to bring you back. But they did. You never regained consciousness but we had a warm, breathing body to say goodbye to. That sounds morbid but it really did make a difference. I hope that even if it means 17 minutes of CPR, that I can give someone’s little sister time to say goodbye, even if it’s a warm body and not a smile and a hug.

Grief is a funny thing. I’ll always carry it with me, like a scar, but it doesn’t always cause me pain. More often then not I think of you with a smile. Of course there are still days I cry and can’t breathe, but most days, I think of you and smile. So thank you for giving me so much to smile about, even if you’re not here to give me new smiles.