Birthday

Dear Mark,

How are things in the great beyond?

Did you celebrate your mortal birthday with mom?

I guess it’s silly to recognize a day on the calendar when you live outside of time.

I’ve thought about you a lot since that day you took matters into your own hands to opt out of your suffering.

Believe it or not, I even started talking to a therapist.

I guess I just needed to run some things by an unbiased ear to check up on myself.

Kind of poetic justice, since you were forced into therapy sessions so many times.

An endless army of well-meaning psychologists and psychiatrists who were either tweaking your mind or tweaking your meds.

Honestly, I’m still grappling with what to do with you.

There is a piece of me that believes I killed you off long before you took your deadly potion.

There was an emotional threshold that you crossed that I could not follow.

I froze a beautiful caricature of our youth that I still visit often.

But your dark abyss of depression followed by manic annihilation were no-go zones for me.

My physical distance from you made it that much easier to simply memorialize what we once had.

As part of my journey into self discovery I’ve been studying the Enneagram.

No shock to you I’m sure, that my personality type is a (9) – the peacemaker.

Creating peace and resolving strife is my super power. Conflict is my kryptonite.

However, when I’m emotionally unhealthy, I am actually in great conflict with myself.

This inner conflict manifested itself in so many subtle ways…

The two hour phone calls where I did nothing but listen to you rant.

The unanswered phone calls, when I saw your number pop up.

The pleas from my siblings for me to hold you accountable for your actions.

The guilt of not being there for you – not being there for mom and dad – not being there for our brother and sister.

I could not reconcile you to the world so I sought to reconcile you to my mind.

I failed you and I failed myself.

I created an illusion of peace that simply masked the greater turmoil within me.

The cruel joke of this life is that often the greatest revelation of our true self comes too late.

I learned September 7th, 2020 that it was indeed too late to make it right with you.

As if needing to rub more salt in this gaping wound to force the healing, I discovered a letter I wrote you on January 30th, 2012. Fitting I guess, that I documented the day you truly left me – more truthfully, the day I left you.

In case you need reminding, I wrote in part:

“I guess one purpose of this letter is a confession of sorts… there is a part of me that feels guilty for being 120 miles away and not being able to offer physical support as Steve, Dad, Amy and others have done. Yet, the biggest part of me is glad that I’m not there to witness your daily struggle. In our last phone conversation, prior to you leaving for Myrtle Beach you said that you really didn’t see me as family… I just breeze into town and breeze out…and in many ways, that’s true. We have been in North Carolina for 19 years, our kids have grown up here, our friends and acquaintances are here. But the love of my family in Lynchburg has not changed. I do care, I am concerned, and I do worry and have anxiety over family issues. However, when it comes to you, I’m at a loss. You are the brother who shared a room with me. You are the brother who stayed awake with me on Christmas Eve. You are the brother who would sleep with me on the pull-out sofa downstairs. You are the brother who bought me my first pair of converse, my first album, my first Levis, my first flannel shirt. You are the brother that let me drive your car and let me tell dad that you “forced me”, when we got caught at the stoplight. You are the brother that invited Jackie and I over for steaks on the grill and frozen daiquiri’s. You are the brother who would come over to our house on Crestview to sit on the deck and look at the mountains. That’s the brother I want to hold on to. This other person that you sometimes become is not the brother of my memory… the brother I hold in my mind is not depressed, is not angry, is not belligerent, is not violent, is not disrespectful to his family. I can’t make these two images come together, so for me it’s easier to keep my distance and hope that one day you might be that person again. Of course that’s all silliness on my part, for this is indeed “you” – I’m merely holding on to the culmination of years of building on the you I choose to remember.

Over the last few years, our conversations have been fewer in number and increasingly painful. I listen intently and do very little talking. Your internal pain and struggle are evident but the filter that you see the world through is skewed. The very people who have lived through the emotional pain with you are often the ones who are the brunt of your venting. I should correct you but I remain silent so as not to endure your rejection. My conscience is not silent though, and it tells me that I’m of no help to you in quiet affirmation. The scales have begun to lift from my eyes and I can now truly see that you are ill. There may be no cure but there is certainly treatment and management of the illness that you have often neglected at the peril of yourself and others. I used to think that you were your own worst enemy and would bring no harm to anyone but yourself…but now I know you have harmed others and given the right conditions, could do so again. So I remain at my safe distance… physically, and more significantly, emotionally. I remain steadfastly your brother, and I love you as I always have but I had the need to purge my own soul. Please get the medical help you need. Do whatever it takes to be a whole person again. There is no future in the past and no forgiveness there. Your life is ahead of you and forgiveness is now. That’s all for now… Much Love – Phil”

Brother, I now see clearly that my war was not with you, but with myself.

These words were my attempt to be at peace with the me I had become and didn’t like.

What I was attempting to purge with futility was my own ego.

Will you forgive me for my selfish lies?

Will you forgive me for the great sin of not being able to love you completely and without condition?

I’m still evolving into my full humanity and maybe a bit envious that you are now whole. Is it disgraceful to admit that I’m free now to love you completely again?

Ah, how clever of you to call me out on this new lie I’m telling myself.

I do still miss the brother of our youth.

And my heart is overjoyed that I’ve reconnected with you in the spirit realm.

But help me love you and me in that messy middle!

I know now that my peace resides there in the darkness.

So, for your birthday, I give you a lifelong work in process – to one day love you in your totality.

And per usual, it’s actually the gift that you’re giving me.

I can hear your sarcastic humor cutting through as you shout in my ear – “Thanks a lot!”

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. I Cor. 13:9-12

It was supposed to be a routine visit to see your mom…just a random Thursday that you happened to be in town. Your last few visits had upset you, as you saw your mom in decline – difficulty putting a name with your face, not wanting to get out of bed, speaking softly with her eyes closed. Doctors were consulted, medicinal dosages were altered in hopes that these physical changes were pharmaceutical aberrations and not something more dire. There was no warning or foreboding intuition of what the morning would bring.

Minutes later you would be holding a warm and familiar body containing a heart that no longer beat. Hope turns to despair, faith to doubt, firm ground suddenly giving way to the quicksand of confusion, fear, and shock. My phone rings, your picture shows in the display and I instinctively smile. The sickening sound of your tears and the catch in your voice are alarming – what’s happened, are you alright, have you been in an accident? Mama’s gone…what? Mama’s gone…

And just like that, everything comes to a crashing halt, but absolutely nothing stops.

Take your time, but if you don’t want to be charged for the room, we’ll need you to get everything out.

Sorry for your loss, but the contract on the sell of your mom’s house is no longer valid.

I know this is a difficult time but we’re going to need a check to cover the unpaid funeral expenses.

Take as much time as you need from work, but payroll is due.

We walk down the hallway of the memory care facility with the smell of bleach and antiseptic clinging to our nose. At the end of the corridor is an elderly lady clutching a babydoll close to her chest. Vacant looks surround us but I know that these are human beings that all have a story; people who love them, and miss what they once were. They lived vibrant lives and made a difference in their community, raised kids, paid taxes and lived through World Wars. Now they look at us in bewilderment as we walk into a nearly empty room – the space that was once the home of their friend and sojourner. A few more odds and ends are packed up and the door is closed on one life, but will soon open to another beautiful but broken soul. In the dining room Fall decorations are being put out in preparation for a Halloween celebration. Plastic pumpkins are placed on the tables and brightly colored paper leaves are scattered around. The symbolism is not lost on me that Autumn is all about death. The blooms have now faded, the colorful foliage will turn brown, and soon the wind will blow them from their life source. The naked trees will mock us in their reminder that life is fleeting. In the stark moment I cannot yet envision the new life that Spring ushers in… only the harsh Winter that is near. I wonder if you see and feel what I do, or maybe you can see beyond – I hope so.

I stand in front of a graveside gathering to offer words of healing and hope. I feel your gaze but I intentionally look anywhere else, afraid that the heaviness of this moment may be too much for us both. My eyes drift to you – the gravitational pull is too great between us, and I look. Your eyes reflect back only your inherent beauty, your graceful poise, and your unquenchable love of family and friends. I see the long and tearful hugs from your girlfriends, the clinging embrace of my father, and I fully understand why you are so loved… why I love you.

Today is your birthday.

This is the day that your mother labored and cried out in pain and eventually pushed you out into a waiting world. She looked at you in all of your vulnerable glory, and an inseparable bond was forged. The umbilical cord that connected you was cut but a new lifeline emerged. This new creation was something that only a troubled mother and her baby girl would ever know. The mystery cannot be explained and is best left to the secret places of your spirit.

Today, loved ones from near and far will wish you a “Happy Birthday”.

Happiness is subjective and a product of circumstances, but your joy comes from a deeper place and emerges solely on the condition of the heart. In good conscience I cannot ask you to be happy on this day but rather I ask you to let us collectively walk in your grief, in your pain, in your loss, in your memories of better times, with laughter and stories of the old days, recollections of riding horses, and playing in the creek, and running to your mama’s bed when you were scared, proudly showing off your new babies to their granny, easter egg hunts, and holiday meals – and recent times when you and your mama remembered the mystery that formed at your birth. Roles were reversed; now she was vulnerable and you were the protector. Together, you talked and laughed and remembered, she would become scared and look to you for safety. Life has now come full circle, as your mama has travelled back through the birth canal to her temporal death, and has been reborn into eternity. Your lifeline to her is now and forever an infinite one, not bound by the limitations of time and space or human frailty. This is the place where we all find our joy and embrace our oneness with all things mortal and immortal.

Soon our tribe will gather and light candles and sing the refrain “Happy Birthday to you…” but it’s not a hope or a request for you to feel something that’s momentarily absent. It’s a declaration of our our happiness that you were born, that you grew in wisdom and grace, that you overcame and became an encouragement to others, that you raised two amazing daughters who still need their mama, that you chose me of all people, to be your life partner.

“I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in

I’ll never meet the ground

Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us

We’re far from the shallow now”

Forever your love – Happy Birthday