Late post: My brother-in-law died and I need dog food

September 2020: I'm not sure why I never published this. Most likely, I felt that the Pintarelli family would resent the level of raw emotion. I no longer worry that they will feel that way.

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February 2019: I’ve been teaching adults full time for four years, and I’ve been teaching Health for two. Of the myriad topics in such a vaguely titled course, teaching the stages of grief is always the most foreign to me. When I share that I’ve grieved over relationships, friends, dogs, and a house, and moderate a class discussion, my students demonstrate that they understand the concept of grieving things and relatives and, sort of, people. Some semesters, I have one or two share about grieving a family member who has died, but usually it’s just a “for future reference” type lesson that I deliver with only slightly more emotion than all the other topics. It’s usually my easy day. I talk, they talk, they write, I assign a participation grade. Easy.

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January 2019: On Wednesday night, and today is Saturday, Anthony said to me for the second or third time that he really wanted to go see his brother. His brother had relapsed two years before and had not yet become stable, and it only ever upset the both of them for Tony to go visit Matt when he was like this. This in mind, I suggested that he just wait for Matt to return his calls. “He’s drunk”, I said. “Just wait.” I expected it to be a day or two max before Matt called and said he’d binged and that he was sorry for blowing us off again that weekend and that he was going to treatment and that he’d come over this weekend. And he really would because he always did.

He was dead.

Around 6, Anthony said again how much he wanted to “go over there”, only this time his hands were shaking and he was leaning on a chair. He reminded me how close Matt had moved. “Remember,” he said, “How he had wanted to be closer to Madison.” He’d only just moved into a house that was 5 minutes away. “Oh yeah... Then go. I forgot. Just go, and call me when you get there.” I said it as sweetly as I could. I already felt bad about what I’d said before. Anthony would call me. Matt would come over this weekend.

He was dead.

So begins my grief. And it will end the day I die.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. These are the stages of grief as they are most widely discussed, most commonly accepted. Sources vary on the amounts of stages and even some of their names, but what is agreed upon is that these stages aren’t stages and the process doesn’t end. A grieving person will cycle through them like a shoe in a dryer, sometimes all in the same afternoon.

Picture it. I am in this moment crying in my bed as my loss overcomes both me and my efforts to dam it. Depression. Earlier, I analyzed. Hard. I poured over the letters from Mathew that I’ve kept folded privately away. I analyzed. I read our texts. I read his texts to a friend.. I looked for the moment. I searched for the out. I fought for the words. I fantasized the break through. Bargaining. Yesterday, I screamed into the sky. Dogs barked. I screamed how sorry I am. I screamed how ashamed I am that I felt the need to set boundaries with such a harmless person. I screamed how angry I was that his sadness so fucking offended us that we felt we had to shun him. We waited and we lived our lives, but when he returned our calls because we were his family and we were supposed to be there for him, we shamed him. We rubbed his nose in it. He learned not to cry out for help, for that was the conditioning we had operated upon him. We didn’t even know it, but that’s what was happening when we did what we did and said what we said and placed by lecture or by proxy the burden of responsibility for his healing on his own god damn back when we could but didn’t want to see that his back was so full of carrying things and just couldn’t fit one more. All along, it didn’t matter what we thought about his life and his health and his feelings and how he should behave, but we thought we knew better than him and that telling him so would stop him. We couldn’t fix him, so we’d just simply talk him out of it. Right? Right. And then, oh how I screamed. How I screamed from the deepest, darkest places, the depths of my empty but full but empty but full chest. How I screamed into the night. Anger. There has been denial and its caustic numbness coexisting in my body among all these other things. It’s laid its weighted blanket over my sweaty body and gently closed my eyes. It has whispered into my ears to stop talking, stop shaking, stop asking so many stupid questions, and just for the love of god stop crying and go pee. It really has tried to protect me, taking turns and giving respectfully some chances for the other faces of grief to step in and see if today is their day to heal me. They never will. If it took Cheryl Strayed walking the miles from SoCal to Oregon, then I am most certainly not going to heal by choking on ham for Matt’s birthday dinner. “Listen honey”, denial says to me, “This just isn’t working. Why don’t you go lie down somewhere.” It tells the whole crew, even depression, to clock out early and try again tomorrow. As denial pulls the blanket up to my head and turns out the light, it whispers to me through the dark, “We’ll be back when you’ve rested. We’ll try another day.” Denial knows full well that even it is a flawed thing I’ve created, that it can’t change a thing.

I wake up in the mornings and cry. I have a coffee because it’s what I always do. No breakfast for me today. Knots are stronger than hunger pangs today. My throat is a choking hazard anyways. So I find something to do. I write an email. I check my calls. I follow up. Once, I even went to work. Ha! Can you imagine someone teaching like this? It was probably so funny that one day I’ll even laugh. I turned the lights out and went home at 3. I sat in the car and made phone calls. Planned transportation and cremation and endured all the feelings and obstacles and things with such openness and bravery that I astounded even myself. My own self, who has been through it all, survived all the traumas before this one. Where did that feeling switch come from? I laugh bitterly because I realize I’m the grandmother in “The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender”, Emilienne who lost almost everyone she ever loved in tragic ways and just resigned herself to it and became tougher and raised a baby and then nursed someone back to health from having their wings hewed off by an axe. Okay. I’m not Emilienne, I’m me, and no one has died like that. Someone has died, but not like that. My brother has died though, and it’s just awful. I mean, it’s just rough. He was a complicated guy, and he didn’t even like me for maybe, I don’t know, three years. But he always told me he loved me, and he would hold me like he’d never see me again at each and every parting. Half hugs are for married guys. He’d wrap me up in his arms until his tired muscles would shake. Why didn’t I see this day drawing nearer and nearer with each of those sadder embraces. I'm not the only one who looks back on Matt's last few weeks and wondered if those hugs were a cry for help.

Well, he’s dead.

My brother has died, and I need dog food.

So I get off the couch. I drink some water. I rinse and dry my face. I cry again. I wipe it away and don’t even bother to try again the cool water trick. I get the dog food. The Dr Pepper makes me cry. The pretzel chips make me cry. He loved them so much. I’d just push them on him, throw them in his lap, so he’d stop being so god damn skinny. And the amount of hummus that that man could eat. No wonder he always had to shit.

None of this is acceptance. No one’s seen it yet. I’ve heard myself say some really profound things for someone in my new shoes, but never have I accepted this death. Give it time, you say. It hasn’t even been a week.

Listen I cut my teeth on this kind of thing. I was a feral child. My life was tragedy for awhile. But never have I ever fathomed that I would 1. love someone other than my child his much 2. feel so regretful after this death, THIS one, this particular one and 3. lack so much self-awareness in the process. Brother-in-law? Who even was he to me? Why do I keep saying sorry? Why did I think that any sort of space and healthy-boundaries-with-addicts could protect me from being just wholly, body and soul, shattered at this death.