Steep Hills

On January 1, 2015, my family and I were happy-cozy in a remote cabin on top of a snowy mountain in Colorado. We were enjoying a over-planned winter getaway at one of those Home Away places, or was it VRBO? I just remember that it was inexplicably stressful to make decisions across the miles with 6 adults' opinions on warm getaway vs cold getaway, California vs Florida, and.... UGH. I'll never forget getting interrupted during at a movie theater with the phone call that pulled the trigger on our final decision in Golden, CO. Okay, waaaay outside/above Golden, but we didn't know that at the time.
Other memorable times include Winnie popping her first tooth on New Year's Day after a week of crabby/fever/fussiness. Touring the Coors factory with my Dad, just the two of us. The dark and slippery drive in the dark to find our cabin. Winnie's first time in the snow. Eating at the only restaurant open on the mountain on New Year's Eve, supposedly the BEST MEXICAN FOOD EVER. Oh yeah, and running out of coffee, a zillion miles from any grocery store. No words for that one. And then there was the first (and hopefully last) New Year's Eve we made grapefruit margaritas because we ran out of limes, and that whole citrus situation makes no sense on so many levels. 
In case you didn't do the math/don't know how old our daughter is- Olivia wasn't in the picture, yet. In fact, she might not have even been in the U.S. (That's another post that may never get written.) More importantly at the time, in case you didn't do the math/don't know how big my immediate family is, my brother wasn't there, either.

Not Ben. 

All of us, except Ben. 

Two out of 3 siblings, our husbands, one grandbaby, my parents. 

We tried EVERYTHING to get Ben to come. Looked at bigger rental houses, offered to pay his flight, let him pick the location. Nope. He got our hopes up when we started planning for it in the summer, but when the getaway countdown really started, no dice. I was feeling angry enough about him changing his mind to have some crazy thoughts about physically kidnapping him and crossing my fingers that he would thank me after we got there. After all, it had taken some intense conversation the previous June (aka: texting) over a period of several hours to convince him to go see Winnie for the first time after she was born. But I did it! Pay for the gas, let him choose the vehicle and take a couple friends along. Deal. But I couldn't make it happen for our New Year's family shindig. SISTER FAIL. That's how I felt, anyway. I was sure that I would be the one who could make him change his mind, over Kate, over Mom and Dad. Me. At the time, it was a big fail. Eight days later, it seemed like the biggest failure of my life. 
Hindsight: That's a lot of pressure.
Hindsight: We were completely ignorant of the fact that we'd lose him only 8 days after toasting the new year in Colorado with grapefruit margaritas.
Hindsight: (Survivors of suicide, you'll feel me on the one...) THE HORRIBLE "WHAT IFS."

What if I'd been able to crack through that shell of anxiety and depression and all the other walls that had him caged? What if Ben would have laughed with us, played games with us, tickled his tiny niece, actually smiled a few real smiles? I would have been happy with one real smile, actually. What if a few days of long overdue family time had started fixing something he thought would be broken forever? What if....

I have to stop, or my fingers will fall off, and/or I'll run out of tissues.

I rang in the New Year with my parents, this year, January 2018, and I've celebrated every new year with them since Ben died. This one makes three. If you count 2015, that's four. I kinda sorta don't want to count 2015 because I feel guilty. How could I have been celebrating and posting on Facebook without my brother, just before he took his life? I hadn't even seen his handsome, sweet face since the previous June, when we had our last roadtrip and visited newborn Winnie together.

During this holiday season (during which we are even more photo-happy than usual), seeing the beautiful photos of my friends with all of their siblings stings, this year. Kind of comparable to that deep sting I felt every time I saw a pregnant friend or family member during those tough years of infertility treatments. For those of you who haven't lost a family member (or suffered from infertility), I can only compare this particular sting to seeing your friends/family getting something you've been super duper wanting for a reeeally long time, but have never been able to accomplish/afford/why didn't I think of that. This entire paragraph probably sounds like an utterly insufficient comparison. Or, why didn't it sting before?

The journey of grief makes no sense, that's why.

That's not to say I haven't felt little twinges in the past when I've scrolled through social media and seen the smiling, complete families, all gathered together for the holidays. Or a birthday. Or just for any reason at all. But to be brutally honest, Ben hadn't been in a family picture for years. When we got together, he rarely showed up to anything that both my sister and I were attending. Maybe the occasional selfie together, but even if he did grace us with his presence on a random Christmas morning to open presents together, he would leave before any of us, in our morning glory/pajamas/insufficiently caffeinated, had thought to take a photo. All of that to point out that I'd already accepted (accepted? become used to?) family photos sans Ben, even before he died.

But this year feels different. Like, reverse grieving, if that's a thing. I'm sad about the memories we never captured BEFORE Ben died, AND I'm sad about the photos that will never be taken, AND I'm sad-jealous-angry-nauseated that the rest of the universe (my apologies to the portion of the universe that is also grieving) gets to take goofie selfies with all the siblings and parents that they grew up with. Now that I've written it "out loud," it actually sounds like textbook grief and not anything weird or special. Well, that doesn't matter either. After all, this is my journey I'm oversharing about and not anyone else's. 

I've never been here, before.

You know, I'm realizing more and more that me, my friends and my family on social media (you know, the people in my newsfeed) share, in general, 2 kinds of posts: 

1. The filtered, warm-fuzzy, jealousy-inducing posts that reflect our perfectly ordered and materially-blessed lives.

2. The unfiltered gut-punches that make us all click on the crying emoji or shocked emoji and say, "I'm praying."

Me, too.

In all honesty (there I go, again- I'm either super honest, or I need to work on some synonyms), that's just the way it is, and I'm ok with it. I mean, how boring would our photographed-internet-posted lives appear to be if we all pledged to stop cropping and filtering and over-dramatizing?? Even the friends and family that I know have so-so home lives and don't get along with their spouses, fight with their kids all the time and can't pay the mortgage--- I will always "like" or even "love" your smoothed over smiles for the camera together! I will! That's me, supporting your best selves and doing my darndest to believe that the struggle behind the camera will get better. And the reactions I have to the tough, shocking and/or downright tragic posts are my attempt to show that I acknowledge your struggle and love you, comment or no comment. I think we all do that, don't we?

I'm not being facetious. 

I'm obviously all about the highs and lows, or I wouldn't be blogging. ADMIT IT, FELLOW WRITERS.

Sidebar: You know, I think the word "overshare" should go away with 2017. We either use it in a self-deprecating way because we're insecure about being so transparent, or we use it in a judgmental way toward others who make us uncomfortable with their transparency (that's what the "unfollow" button is for). I use it so much, it will be hard for me to change my language, but I hereby pledge to try!

Believe it, or not, back to grief.. it all ties in, I think. So many of us went through the holidays with a dear person missing from the camera. And starting a new year without Ben, for me, feels exhausting and sad- just hard to let go and believe this year will be fresh, you know? Those feelings are "just feelings," and there a zillion biological-psychological-pharmacological-sociological-all-the-ological factors that play into experiencing (or not) a thrill of hope, desire, energy.... write an inspiring "this will be your best year EVERRRR" blog post, for example. And every time I write something moderately depressing about my grief journey, I immediately think about everyone else who is hitting an unexpected curve of their own, as if we finally thought we'd scraped and fought our way up the hill, but hit a wall we didn't know was there, and slid back down, limp, just when we were trying so hard to be hopeful and wanting desperately for a fresh start.... now, too sad to even care about the difference between 11:59 and 12:00 on December 31st.

With that said, I truly enjoyed myself as I rang in the New Year with family. Great party! And we may or may not have started a new tradition where we held a piece of real silver and some bread to bring in 2018 with the promise of money and food all year (some people ate herring for good luck, but I had to draw the line on that one). Counting down was fun and loud and very champagne-y. Kisses, hugs, love all around, booms and bangs and fireworks everywhere. The neighbors across the street even caught their driveway on fire. Twice, was the rumor.

I didn't hit that wall until the next morning. Almost 3 years in, I've gained a little more "function among the living" stamina, so I guess my claws are sharper and stronger when it comes to digging into the sides of steep hills. I've only cried a little, this time around. The heaviness in my chest is ever so slightly less heavy. And most of all, I'm slowly learning how to relax after it happens. You know, after the unexpected wave of grief knocks me over, I dig in and then let myself lie there and breathe. Give myself permission to think and be sad or mad and just feel all the feels that present themselves, accepting that this isn't the worst or last time.

Ben, I just miss you so damn much.

And that's the one thing that won't change.
Yours,
Hannah