The anniversary of Kevin’s death hung like a specter. I had to learn how to conquer March.
Those words end a chapter in my yet-to-be published memoir about journeying through grief after my brother’s death and moving closer to my Jewish faith.
Today is March 1, the 24th anniversary of my brother’s death. It is a day I dread because it is a reminder of a horrific day in my and my family’s life. I remember March 1, 1986, as if it were yesterday. I was asleep in my apartment at Northwestern. The phone rang, and both of my parents were on the line.
My parents told me Kevin had died after falling asleep at the wheel in his red jeep. He was driving from California, where he was vacationing with a friend. He was 23. I was 21.
The first year after Kevin’s death, I went on as if nothing had changed. I finished graduate school. I took a job with the Associated Press. Only in private did I grieve. It was an ugly grief. I often woke between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. – the period in which he died. Dreams of my brother rolling over in his jeep haunted me. Tears would stream down my cheeks when I woke, then I would return to sleep until my alarm rang. My gut had a persistent knot as if someone had delivered a lasting sucker punch. Yet, I faced each day as if it were normal. Outwardly, I smiled.
Then, the first anniversary of Kevin’s death approached. Done with college, I was working as a reporter for the AP in Boston on the night shift. I crammed my free time with activity – skiing, tae kwon do, dating. I rarely told anyone of my loss. In February 1987, a co-worker died in a car accident. I barely knew him, but the death rocked me. Sleep deprivation. Anxiety. Weepiness. By April, I was an emotional mess. I had an anniversary reaction to a death, but did not know the name for my malaise until years later when I interviewed a grief expert. I quit my job and went home to live with my parents in Ohio for a short period. Then, I took another job at the Cincinnati Enquirer.
It was bliss for a while during that second year after Kevin’s death. I lived in a beautiful apartment complex with ducks in the ponds. I regularly produced in-depth stories. I was a Big Sister and a runaway shelter volunteer. I was learning guitar, playing tennis, and studying flute again. I was a champion at ignoring the grief festering beneath my skin. My parents and I talked about how we were doing, but conversations were brief and shaky. I call this blog the “Jewish Muse,” but I had little connection to my faith in 1988. I was not drawn to find comfort in a temple.
Four dark coffins loomed large. It was February 1988, and against my wishes, I was reporting on the funeral of four family members killed in a fire. Hushed voices and sobs echoed in the funeral parlor. Mourners tried to reach out to the fire’s lone survivor, a 13-year-old girl. In those coffins were her parents and her two younger brothers, 2 and 10.
Within weeks of covering that funeral, I again had nightmares of my brother’s death. My second anniversary grief reaction was worse than the first. I lost touch some with reality, thinking people were following me. I began showing up late for work and struggled to put anything on paper. I barely ate or slept. That tightness in my gut – that sucker punch that settled there on March 1, 1986 – squeezed me like a vise.
I self-combusted as March 1, 1988, approached. I ended up in a hospital for a short spell until my parents pulled me out on the advice of a counselor they trusted. Hospitalization was an extreme move for what was depression caused by grief. I needed counseling. I needed finally to take the time to confront the grief I had shoved to a back shelf.
Fast-forward to today. Two decades of Marches have gone by. March 1 nears, and I still fear it some. Yet, I know I can handle it. I have created coping strategies, and I have grown closer to my Jewish faith. For many years, I coped by being good to myself on that day. I accepted that it might or might not be a hard day. I looked at photos of Kevin and remembered the joy he brought to those who knew him. I learned, too, to reach out to friends when the day was too hard to go it alone.
In the last decade, I also have made a point to try to go to temple on Kevin’s yahrzeit, the Jewish calendar anniversary of his death. Some times, the experience is comforting. Other times, it simply just is.
Some Marches are more difficult than others. March 2008 was one of those; I had just become a mother for the first time. But sadness permeated me perhaps because I could not share my greatest joy with my brother Kevin. And yet the torrent of tears on March 1, 2008, were hard to define. They were tears of sorrow and indescribable joy: my husband Pavlik held my hand during that temple service two years ago – and our baby boy, Simon Kevin, was in my arms. Finally, I had a family of my own.
This Friday night, I will light a memorial candle at home. I also will go to temple and stand when my brother’s name is read. I will say the Kaddish with other mourners. I find comfort in ritual now. During the moment of silence, I will likely read passages in the prayer book offering comfort to the bereaved. One of the first passages always grips me:
It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch. A fearful thing to love, hope, dream: to be __ To be, and oh! To lose. __ Rabbi Chaim Stern
It is fear, I suspect, that made March such a difficult month for me in decades past. I feared losing someone again. I feared losing myself.
