by Troy
My Grandpa Steele used to say, “Sometimes I sits and thinks: sometimes I just sits.”
In this wee humid hour of 3am, which marks my brother’s death on July 30th, 2017, I sits. In this wee hour I thinks. In this wee hour I cry. In this wee hour I am tortured. In this wee hour I thrash and purge. In this wee hour I write what I can’t say out loud. In this wee hour I heal ever so slightly.
In the wee hours I have heard the fireman’s siren, a bellowing cow, the sound of milking machines, a crying baby and the silence of an empty barn. In the wee hours I got the 3am phone call that my only brother had died on the Carolina shore. In the wee hours I fret about financials, workload, the future and my family’s well-being. I fret about things I can’t control especially around these yearly remembrance days. What is the purpose for all this mental toil?
How must I go on? How may I shoulder the grief, the failures, and the animosity? How do I put on the “good” face? It plagues me like a disease, a cruel joke, a silent mind game. What is it that makes me weak? What is it that creates this negativity over positivity? What is it that makes me scream inside? What is it, and why does it seem to burden just me? What is it that makes me weep so?
“In the Lakota/Sioux tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most waken, most holy. There’s a sense that when someone is struck by the sudden lightning of loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. You might recall what it’s like to be with someone who has grieved deeply. The person has no layer of protection, nothing left to defend. The mystery is looking out through that person’s eyes. For the time being, he or she has accepted the reality of loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future.” ― Tara Brach.
In the wee hours, I recall Forrest Gump asking his mother, “What’s my destiny momma?”
I wonder if Dr. Fred Provenza was right: Is this all there is?
What is my why? Where am I going? What’s my legacy? What’s wrong with my head? Why can’t I focus? Am I damaged goods? Why can’t I become truly happy? What is the roadmap? What more do I have to do? What is God’s plan? Can I be loved? Who will listen? Who will understand the emotional pain? Who will help me? Who will be my savior? Is there relief in my future?
Why does this sentiment and mental burnout plague me, year after grieving year?
Society expects their fathers to be strong not vulnerable, but as I listen to Chester, Danny, Brent, Alexandria and Shaman’s Harvest “Dragonfly”, the wee hours become lighter as dawn arrives and the internal turmoil subsides for now. I’m just part of the nation’s walking wounded.
I look at what I’ve written. The stark words and the waded-up Kleenexes are my therapy for the day. On this morning another milestone of my brother Scott passes. He would have been 59 years old.
Crying is my coping mechanism to purge the grief. It’s my emotional medication these days. I hope the words relate and allow those who are afraid, to show such vulnerabilities and unload too—if they need to in the wee hours.
Most of us are trying in earnest to find what “it” is and move to a better place in our lives, all the while grieving for those missed opportunities in life. That’s what it feels like to me even though I am truly blessed.
In the wee hours, I struggle to make sense of it all, and find relevance on another July 30th morning. Reciting my demons during this timeframe helps in the wee hours, but now I must RISE!! For my brother’s sake.
House Cleaning
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