Truths: The year

This weekend marked a year since my brother passed away in a drowning accident. I would have thought that after a year, I would come to terms with it – found peace with it. But yesterday was hard – really hard.

I didn’t sleep well the night before and when I woke up - there was this sense of dread. I remember waking up last year at the cabin – only to walk down the stairs and have my dad tell me that my brother was dead.

I still remember those words and my shock and disbelief. People you love just don’t die…

I walked down those same steps yesterday and looked at the island where I had gotten the news – and I sighed. A deep sigh, an angry sigh, a sad sigh.

Maybe the anniversary of a death is hard because we unconsciously hope that the whole last year was just a nightmare – that we will wake up and everything will be back to normal. Or maybe it is hard because it is obvious that it wasn’t… Either way – a year later the truth is still hard to face.

As I sat and stared at the lake – my mind racing like a blur… I looked over and saw the gift I had for my brother for his birthday – the one he never received and the one, which has sat in the same place for the last year.

There never seemed to be the right time to open it – to face he wasn’t coming back. I had mentioned doing it a few times… over a few cocktails – at Christmas – on his birthday – the 4th of July…but it never seemed right.

I was alone in the house yesterday morning… the girls still sleeping, Bill out fishing and when I looked at the box – I knew it was the right time.

I barely recalled what was in it – a metal frog for his collection…and when I opened the box I was pleasantly surprised to find the goofiest frog I could imagine… one that my brother would have loved. I smiled and for a brief moment – I knew he was smiling too.

Later in the day as we took the girls tubing and I sat watching them bounce up and down in the waves… I couldn’t help but contemplate the irony of my brother’s death. We spent our whole lives growing up on water. Our home was on a massive chain of lakes, we had a swimming pool and if that wasn’t enough we had a home up north on the lake. Our family lived for the lake and the very lake we grew up on would be the lake my brother drowned in.

Sure that night he made some really bad choices – but after all those years of water…

It just didn’t seem fair.

But, life isn’t fair… and it is certainly never predictable and just when we think we have it figured out – all we learn is that we were wrong.

I yell at my brother a lot for dying… but somehow, in the end, he actually gave me a gift because of it. I was given the gift of a close relationship with my niece.

I try to be an optimist and if I can say that anything good came of something so awful – it was a chance to be a bigger part of my niece’s life.

Between the court battles and the crap that goes along with it all – we have created this relationship… we have made going to court and to meetings just one of the things we do that day… and spent the rest of the time doing something fun.

I have taken her to visit a college, shared in Dr. appointments, dinners, lunches, took her for her driver’s permit and am now helping her to drive. Just last week she said, “I want you to meet Justin (her boyfriend).”

That meant the world to me – because it showed that she cared what I thought – and wanted me to be a part of her life.

I won’t lie – it also helped that one of her friends referred to me as the “cool aunt.”

It has been a year of change – a year I never saw coming – never wanted to come. But I trudged through it, sometimes barely treading water, but somehow I got to today – and along this troubled journey good things have come – perhaps all part of some greater plan that none of us have control over.

I lost my brother a year ago but I gained a relationship with my niece – I think that was my brother’s way of saying he loved me.