” I’m not overtired, overwrought, overwhelmed, overdramatizing, or overreacting. . . . “

Yes, it’s true.

Last Wednesday Greg and I went to Safeway for shoelaces, and we got separated in the store.

 After searching for him unsuccessfully for a few minutes,  I jogged down Aisle 1 to the back of the store, to walk perpendicular to the aisles so I could look down each one until I found shoelaces and/or Greg.

And that’s how I spotted you.  There in Aisle 7, “Ethnic Foods”,  there you were, yes, you were there: I saw you. You, my brother.  You were wearing those baggy black jeans with the frayed cuffs, your Vans sneakers and a grey hoodie I didn’t recognize. You were alone. You were standing next to the Chinese food shelf, and you were peering at a row of  bottles–oils or sauces, I think. Your hand rested on the cart next to you. I wish now I’d thought to look in it.  I watched in disbelief as you studied the bottles. Then you looked up and that’s when our eyes met.

You  looked just the same as always:  a detached, slightly distracted expression around your eyes,  and some private internal amusement leaving a faint smile on your lips. Not alarming, not scary, except it was alarming and scary, because… you are dead.

 

Remember? You died in August, 2012.   I know because I was there:  I saw you right before you died.  I know because I was one of the people carrying your coffin over the grassy moguls in the cemetery, transporting you – and I’m sure you’ll understand that we all simply assumed it was in fact you in that coffin, though come to think of it,  the proof was entirely circumstantial, as I never actually observed you inside it – from  from the slope where the rabbi performed the service up and across the wet hilly grass to your grave.  There,  our youngest brother and I and some others,  slipping on the muddy earth, lowered your coffin onto some kind of platform already rigged and waiting to lower you into your grave. Yes. Sobbing, we put you in the ground. Yes. Sobbing, we threw stones onto your coffin. Yes. Sobbing, we heard the rabbi singing. Do you remember, it was raining?

Mostly, I know you died,  because after August 9, I never  saw you again — until last Wednesday, almost two years later.

 Our encounter at Safeway happened fast, much faster than it takes me to recall it,  yet I’ll never forget it.  You looked up from the bottles and jars you were studying, and when our eyes met, I knew at once it was you.  No matter what Greg and my friends say, there was no confusion, no double-take, no having to think about it, and no doubt.  I’m not in denial, drugged, or hallucinating.  I’m not overtired, overwrought, overwhelmed, overdramatizing, or overreacting. I’m not mad, mentally ill, or mistaken. It was YOU. When you glanced up and saw me, your eyes locked right onto mine, but not aggressively, like they did the day before you died, when you could no longer speak with your mouth, and your eyes communicated with that strange, rapt urgency….. Frankly, your gaze was curiously unexcited; gentle,  mildly curious, politely expectant.  As always, a bit amused.

 I?  Well, yes, I was shocked, of course, yes, shocked to tears. Running into my dead brother in the ethnic foods aisle at the grocery store was not covered in any of the death-and-grieving books I read after you died.  It was not one of “the stages”, you know what I mean?None of my friends who’d recounted their own experiences with the death of a close sibling ever mentioned encountering the dead person in a grocery store.

And the fact is that after two years, I’d finally, reluctantly begun to accept the unbelievable reality that my younger brother – best friend of my childhood, conspirator, confederate,  trustee, confidant, and person who’d known me longer than anyone – you – died, actually died. So you can imagine my surprise at encountering you at all, anywhere…..but at Safeway? The most prosaic place in the world. And you, the least prosaic person.

It’s been almost two years since you left us, and though I am “better” (that is, I  don’t cry as much as I did),  I still cry for you.  Sometimes I feel as though I am the only one who still cries for you.  Your little boys, of course,  have their own way of managing your loss, children grieve differently, don’t they? The twins at six and the oldest boy at ten years old are still young enough to be intrinsically resilient,  both physically and spiritually.  And their memory operates differently from adult memory. It  seems less freighted with emotion and more fact-focused than  ours.

 Of course, though… she goes on dates,  Not only that, but she laughs and jokes and travels and plays, with her friends and her dates and your little boys. I guess this is what she wants to do.

 

Our youngest brother laughs and jokes when he recalls funny memories about you, like how when we were little our house was so cold that you used to get dressed every morning under the piano, in front of the heating vent. You sat on the floor blue-lipped and shivering, backed up to the wall and trying to warm up, only our parents kept the thermostat so low that the vent emitted only the mildest whisper of heat, really more the memory of heat than the real thing.

And of course, your friends remember you. They mention  you In their social networking and alumni notes. Facebook friends send you birthday greetings, which seems strange to me.  Really, though,  your friends have moved on;  they sing and check their watches and listen to music and go to work and have sex and play ping pong and watch TV.

 

Sometimes they think of you, I guess, if something or someone reminds them that once,  you were with us. And now you are not.  And we cannot say where you are. I wonder if anyone still finds these three facts as disconcerting as I do.   I wonder if they understand that the mystery posed by these three facts would be utterly overwhelming but for humankind’s ability to “keep” you preserved in our memory. Indeed,  is that not memory’s primary purpose? To keep a cherished item alive?

Even memory, though, can hurt. That’s why the people close to you have placed a blanket on your memory, so when they remember you, the pain isn ‘t sharp and hard anymore.  Instead, its soft and pillowy. I think I am the only one left who has not muffled your memory.  I know everyone is waiting for me to unfold my own blanket, but if I  too, stuff a blanket onto the shards that were stabbed into my heart when you died,  who will keep you alive – unmuffled and real –  in memory? Who will stay sad for you?