With Great Thanks

Last weekend I went to a Thanksgiving dinner party at my friend's house in Milwaukee. One of the traditions--this was the 17th year the dinner party has taken place--is to go around the room and listen while everyone says what he or she is thankful for. This is no small activity, as there were about 35-ish people in the room. But it was a beautiful experience. We clapped for each others' successes, we nodded solemnly at each others' struggles. We laughed at the craziness the world throws at us. And we wondered at how, sometimes, things just work out in the strangest, most perfect ways.

When it came time for me to talk, I said that I was thankful for my big brother.

My parents divorced when I was 5 years old. At that time, my parents had three boys: John, my older brother, me, and Brandon, my younger brother. Because of the emotional turmoil of listening to battling parents, hearing each side bash the other and the other's new spouse, being bounced from house to house (eight weeks each summer and every other Christmas at our dad's house), and each of us feeling pressured to choose a parent to side with, we would go between being the rock we each held onto to tossing that rock angrily into the sea. But the rocks all had strings attached to them because they always, eventually, got pulled back to shore, dried off, and held in our hands again. We grew close. We grew apart. We lived together. We lived apart. We saw eye to eye. We agreed on nothing. We supported. We competed.

My big brother, John, passed away on June 9th this year after dealing with several severe physical ailments that made his life miserable.

On the surface, John and I could not have been any more different. As a child, John was all boy: toy cars, He-Man figurines, jujitsu lessons, shooting guns, blowing up grasshoppers. I was the soft, sensitive one: toy dishes, Care Bears figurines, piano lessons, playing house, not blowing up (or going anywhere near) grasshoppers. While John was into heavy metal music, I loved classical music. While John was forever pushing boundaries and rebelling against authority, I was a people pleaser who did anything he could to keep the peace. While John believed in bucking the system and pursuing his dreams to be in a death metal band, I wanted to pursue my dream of being in a professional ballet company and then go to college. While John, as an adult, carried anger and resentment about our parents' divorce, I was all about letting the past stay in the past. You get the point.

John left Arizona in ninth grade to go live with our dad in Idaho. To me, Arizona was home, and so I saw John only sporadically after that. As we grew older, I found John harder and harder to talk to. I felt like we were from different planets. He would call me, often either drinking or already drunk, and spend two or three hours ranting and raging about our mom or our dad or one of our siblings. Because he was drinking, he would more often than not repeat himself several times. I couldn't take it. On the one hand, I knew that I loved him and that our relationship needed to be mended, but on the other hand, I found him irascible and almost impossible to deal with so much of the time.

John wanted to be cremated. When we got to Idaho for the funeral, we were told that we could write a letter to John that would be placed in his box to be cremated with him. It was while writing this letter, through crippling bouts of tears and sobbing, that I finally learned just how alike he and I were.

• Like me, John knew he was different than everyone around him. He knew that the clothes he wore, the style of hair he wanted, and the music he listened to were not condoned by our conservative religion and certainly not by our mother. He felt confined and forced into a box that wasn't big enough for him. As an adult, he lashed out with fury: he drank and partied heavily, he swore like the swarthiest of sailors, he joined a death metal band (during which concerts he was known to tear pages out of the scriptures and wipe his rear end with them), he surrounded himself with skulls and skeletons: iconography that was the antithesis to our Mormon upbringing. These were all John's ways of asserting his individuality and crying out for an acceptance he never felt he fully got.
•  Like me, John thrived on making people laugh. He could be dared to do just about anything (including scraping bugs off the bumper of the car and eating them). He made the funniest faces and cartoonish voices. He told bawdy jokes. He licked people's faces. Although I cannot say for sure whether John used humor and sarcasm in the same way I did, to cover up the misery, anger, and hurt I was feeling inside, something tells me that he probably was. There always seemed to be something bubbling under the surface, something ready to explode out when the right button was pushed.
• Like me, John was terrified of negative judgment and was ready to attack whenever he perceived it. John felt like I judged him because he listened to "bad" music, hated reading, had no interest in college, etc. And I always felt like John judged me because I was an artistic intellectual who preferred a nice glass of wine to doing shots of Jaegermeister. But, like me, John's interests became a persona he had to adopt, a brand he had to sell, an image he had to maintain. But that fear of judgment was always there, and it was that mutual fear that put the most distance between us as adults.

It seems incredibly sacrilegious to say, but John's death has brought about so many wonderful things. The week of his funeral, as sad as it was, had us laughing until we cried, doing silly things, playing games, and enjoying the company of loved ones, some of whom we hadn't seen in a very long time. People's individual lives have changed. Relationships have changed. Some people went through (and may still be going through) very dark times after John's death; after all, the death of a loved one forces people to see their own lives, the past, the present, and the future, from angles they never knew existed. 

I have already talked at length, in previous posts, about my own journey and how it started with John's death. But my brother's passing also brought me closer to my family. It gave me a renewed love and respect for my dad. It made me appreciate the relationships I have with all my other siblings, most profoundly, my younger brother Brandon, whom I love so much it hurts my heart to even contemplate. With that, I give you some of the things I am most thankful for:

• I am thankful for a family that is freaking hilarious. We have ourselves laughing so hard that we can't breathe sometimes. Humor is, without a doubt, one of the greatest things in life.
• I am thankful for a dad and step-mom who have supported me in ways too numerous to count. They have been there for me unconditionally and have seen me through some of my most difficult times.
• I am thankful for a mom and step-dad who have sacrificed so much ever since we were kids for the happiness and welfare of their children.
• I am so thankful for change, as difficult and hellish as it can be. I am so glad I have had the chance to look at myself under a microscope and see things that I may never have seen.
• I am thankful for people I've never met in person, people who have touched my life, brought tears to my eyes, made me think, brought new understandings, led me down new roads, and supported me. These people have given me a renewed hope for and love of humanity. (I'm looking at you, MBB, Affirmation, and people who have commented on and read my blog!)
• I am thankful for being blessed to have the greatest human beings ever to exist on the earth as my friends. (I apologize to everyone else who kind of got shafted in this department. I didn't mean to hog all the most amazing people; it just worked out that way.) If it weren't for my small, close-knit group of friends, I'd probably be a crack whore today, eating Red Vines and Ramen noodles while talking incoherently to my pet gerbil named Stilton.
• I am thankful for my beautiful sister-in-law Julie, who made John's life so wonderful. She is an angel on earth.
• Finally, I am thankful for having the most perfect, amazing, mind-blowing siblings. Megan, you are so beautiful and talented, and I know you will be a HUGE success. Good luck in college, girl! Kymri, you know you have changed my life on several occasions and saved me from many a breakdown. You and I are pretty much the most hilarious people on the planet. Briana, your strength and grace and drive to succeed have been an inspiration ever since you were a little girl. Congratulations on your marriage! I couldn't be happier for you. Cameron, you are an emotional rock for me. Your ability to overcome challenges and press forward with a smile astound me. Oh, and you're dang sexy. So is your wife. Brandon--I just started crying and I've only typed your name!! I'm pathetic--if ever there was an example of the power of growth and change, it is you. You have shown me, over and over, what dedication and persistence looks like. Yes, you're also pretty dang sexy. And so is your wife. John, although you are no longer here, I want you to know how much I love you and will always love you. I have so much to thank you for, things that neither of us could ever have foreseen as kids, racing our Match-Box Cars in the basement, making pillow forts, and singing "Long Cool Woman" at the top of our lungs. You have literally changed the course of my life for the better. It's insane: your death brought me to life. Rock on, John. Rock on.