Thirty. The age my little brother would have been today. Unfortunately, we don’t get to celebrate this major milestone with him in the flesh. It’s been just over five years since he passed away at 24, just months before his 25th birthday.


Of all the things I could think about is how he never got the age discount on his car insurance. Why? The dude was a car guy. I think about all of the cars which he would given his manhood for (sorry, had to go there). Specifically, the Shelby GT500. I would bet Son #1’s Lightning McQueen toys on the fact that this car would be in his garage and that insurance age benefit would have come in nice and handy considering the rates on this vehicle and a single man would have been ridiculous. Your deceased brother’s car insurance is a strange thing to consume your self with. I would imagine some psycho babble quack physician would tell me it’s my way of coping. Whatever. I cope with the absence of by brother by crying and missing him every fucking day.

Over the last few weeks, I have wrapped myself up in my own self-created internal battles to not think about today. I guess by staying a little pre-occupied with the more fickle concepts of the world, I can some how artificially avoid the 30th birthday of my brother. The loss has been the single greatest (or worst depending on perspective) event that has chiseled who I have become. No offense to my lovely wife and my sons who are the mortal enemies of sleep. But I think there are souls in your life that give you confidence that there is a balance. You start to extrapolate that confidence over the future and begin to believe that it will always be there for you to lean against. I am guilty as charged.

Being so close to my brother, I relied on the fact that he would always be there to help me sweep up the shards of life when shattered by elements out of our control. It’s simple: I BELIEVED he would be here for my boys’ birthdays, retirement parties, new car purchases, job losses, and escorting me ungracefully into our uncomfortable adulthood. Rather than bitch, I want to focus on this day.

We had dinner with my parents last night in early honor of today. Secretly, I wanted to throw a party for his 30th birthday. But the more I thought about it, the more I considered that people may think it a little demented. I’m trying to do something worthy enough to make me feel better about how much it hurts to not have that one person that just got ‘it’ about you around. Back to dinner. We talked about where he would be today. The conversation was fairly short but go figure. No one wants to consider the ‘what-ifs’ and just going there is a recipe for five gallon bucket loads of tears that I really don’t want to try to explain to the waiter as he serves me another beer. No sir, the salsa is not too spicy.

What would he look like? Where would he be living? Would he own a house? Would he be in a committed relationship? Would he have any children? Would he be happy? Would he be in shock by Son #1’s dancing abilities (or lack thereof)? Would he be surprised that Son #2 would rather eat refried beans than take a bottle?

30 is a big birthday. I remember when I turned thirty. He was there. Before he passed away, I was accused of doing too much for him, spoiling him, and trying to protect him from the disappointments of an imperfect world. Again, guilty as charged. That was the one thing I could do while he was here. Ultimately, there’s a feeling of failure that there was one thing I couldn't protect him from. The whole experience definitely put me in check. But I always wanted to make things better for him no matter how much it cost me or the impossible battle it could potentially be. That is what big brothers do: We do whatever it takes for our little brothers to be happy. Whatever it takes.

A message to my brother:

Today, I wanted to write you a letter and take it to your grave. But as is consistent with my behavior, I manufacture things to do to keep me busy from that which hurts. I should’ve put some music on a CD and delivered it to you. I have always believed that you had CD player in Heaven. Because I don’t know, I secretly felt that when I had my head phones on and had the music as loud as I could get it so I couldn’t hear the outside world, you were right there in my heart hearing every lyric, every chord, every beat, and feeling the exactness of expansiveness of the sound. We were sharing it just like when we sat in your room and listened to music together.

My days of going to the cemetery have dramatically slowed over the years. Now it seems like I only go twice a year and I struggle with the guilt of not showing respect to you. I am repeatedly told that you would understand given my obligations with the boys. You were always very understanding of my imperfections. I wish more people in the world would have had the opportunity to experience your compassion. I made many mistakes against you and at times was very insensitive to your feelings. But as predictable as rain in Seattle, you never judged me and always let me walk my path, stumble, and apologize.

Tough day today. It feels like a lifetime has passed for me since we hung out. The landscape of life is very different without you physically being around. I was reminded of this last night at the restaurant. Son #1 grabbed our mother’s eye glasses and plopped them on to his little nose. There was just this uncanny resemblance of you sitting at that booth eating taquitos. For that very brief moment in time, it was like you were sitting across the table from me again and laughing about dad doing that fork and spoon trick into a glass.

Today is your 30th birthday. I hope you have cake and a great day. But time references and Heaven really don’t make much sense now do they. Let me know if ‘they’ didn’t plan you a party. I miss you.

Over the years, I have learned a lot about myself and my interactions with the world. There are so many things I’ve tried to control which were no where near being worth my effort. For the most part, I’ve learned that I don’t have these skills. While I am a systematic thinker, I am too emotional to see past my own heart. My emotion supersedes my logic unfortunately.

If I could paint a picture of what’s going on my head at any given time, it would be the image of a household junk drawer: The one-stop shop item that exists in every household around our planet that categorizes the uncategorizeable and organizes the unorganizeable (have I mentioned that making up words shows that you are creative?) Don’t act like you have complete order in your house, we all have junk drawers, just some are more organized than others. Today, my head feels like a catch all for all of the shit going on in my life. I’ve been asked recently why I’m looking for so much dramatic change in my life. I don’t think of it as change. I think of it as dumping the shit out of the junk drawer out on to the floor and then just walking away from it for a while.

I call it a change of perspective on the junk in my drawer. Think about it. You can easily go to Bed, Bath and Beyond or whatever retail outlet selling items to get the disorganized person now organized is still in business after this economic debacle we are riding through and buy a tray-based junk drawer organizer. We have one in our junk drawer. It’s a nice white plastic tray with bins for all of our crap and idiot proof stickers in each bin to show us where to put each paper clip, pair of pliers, post-it note, and rogue unusable key for something you used to own in the 80’s. Great, now I have a place to keep those three chartreuse thumb tacks for which I had no home. Probably going to need those someday.

Anyway, I need a tray-based junk drawer organizer for my head.

What it comes down to is that I’m exhausted with the concern of the risks related to every decision I make. Sometimes the magnitude of existence and responsibility wears on my soul so heavily I almost buckle under the downward pressure of the extreme weight of life’s reality. There’s this sense of being trapped into life’s catastrophe. I keep looking into my sons’ eyes and see the innocence of their hearts and the need for shelter from harm. I worry that I can’t provide it.

I guess I’m just trying to hold on to that little bit of sanity I have left and make the best decisions possible based on the chaos and the lack of my cerebrally-located junk drawer organizer. The web of life and its decisions have dramatically complicated the way I live each day. And I thought preschool was a challenge. With this entry, I am forcing myself to remain a little vague due to the complexity of the decisions and the web of their inter-relations. Otherwise, this would turn in the epic “War and Peace” of my blog-based ramblings. No one wants that. It’s hard enough for me to be brief as it is. What I have discovered about my complexities is that they affect my mental and physical health more than I was aware. This is where the real complication exists at its base. I’m struggling with making decisions, constantly evaluating the moving targets, doing my best to assess risks, and mitigating the collateral damage as it happens. But as I wrestle with this 1000 lbs. gorilla, I see that my behavior and the way that I cope with the world (read here: my family) become adversely affected. To break it down, that sucks balls. Everything I fight and make decisions for are becoming the target of my degrading behavior and worldly tolerance.

What do you do when nothing else has worked? Change your approach.

Call it the season or call it as just me whining to get attention. I feel like I would significantly benefit from a tray-based organizer that I could shove in to my head that could systematically categorize the clutter. I suppose there’s no Bed, Bath and Beyond of the mind so I am out of luck there. But given the state of the world and reality as we all know it, I just want someone to tell me it’s going to be OK and mean it. I am trying to believe this myself and I am having a very difficult time.