![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistNovember is a month for the dead.
"They shall not grow old as we grow old" always makes me think of my brother now. Then it always makes me feel bad -- he didn't join an army or die in a war. The few members of my family that have been in wars, my grandpa in the Battle of the Bulge, my uncle and a cousin or two in both Iraq wars, they are all growing old.
The only person I really know who didn't have the chance to get old is my brother. But I feel bad thinking of him on Remembrance Day; it's for other people.
Still, November's about remembrance.
"What do you think," I saw a guy I recognize from local radio (I've been interviewed once for being a Lib Dem, once for being bi), "about those people just over there having fun, while you're here for this somber event?"
The park where Manchester holds its Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil is right near busy streets full of traffic and the bars of Canal Street. It was a weekend afternoon so of course people were laughing and calling to each other. Phones rang and buses zoomed by.
I couldn't hear the response of the person being interviewed, but I immediately knew what mine would be. We mourn death because life is a wonderful thing. Everybody should get the chance to talk and laugh like these people in the bars across the canal from us were doing. They don't ruin our memorial but illustrate why we make it: we cherish life, normal everyday life that so many of us take for granted. If all this weren't so sweet, we wouldn't mourn those we can no longer share it with, who helped make it so good.
One of the reasons I cried so much when my brother died is that I knew I wouldn't always cry like that. I couldn't help but think that some day this wound would heal over. It would leave its mark (I knew right away that I'd be wary of Thanksgiving forever), it would still hurt, but I'd get used to it.
I used to write about my brother all the time. I even wrote about my dread that I was running out of things to say, which is half about me getting used to him not being around and half that there aren't any new stories about him.
Even now I haven't talked about him at all, but only me.
As time stretches out between us I am less able to guess or imagine how these years would have changed him. He was 21 when he died, he'd have been 28 in a few weeks. My life changed unimaginably between 21 and 28.
I hope we would have been friends once he grew out of the teenage sullenness and dislike of his uncool sister. I miss him when I want someone to commiserate with about our parents, someone in my family I could talk to about what my life is actually like -- he knew about my first boyfriend before my parents did. If my suspicions are right, he could've talked to me about his being not-entirely straight, if he wanted to. I'd have told him I'm not. I hear my friends now talk about their grown-up relationships with siblings and it's a little difficult for me sometimes because I never got to try that.
But mostly it's fine; mostly nothing about it bothers me. The date doesn't bother me (I always say he's no more gone then than any other day). Thanksgiving doesn't exist in the place where spent all of them since, in the UK where no one knows what it is, and anyway Thanksgiving is more properly remembered for the genocide of millions of indigenous people than my one brother. (The date and the Thanksgiving holiday bother my parents, and thinking of them saddens me a lot... but this year they're away on a Caribbean cruise! Not their kind of thing at all but I think their friends coerced them to come along with them because they know what a hard time of year it is for them. My parents have awesome friends.)
So I think I'm doing really well this year. But it's still November, it's grey and cold, and the days are still getting shorter even though sunset's now at 4pm.
It's still a time for remembering the dead.
"They shall not grow old as we grow old" always makes me think of my brother now. Then it always makes me feel bad -- he didn't join an army or die in a war. The few members of my family that have been in wars, my grandpa in the Battle of the Bulge, my uncle and a cousin or two in both Iraq wars, they are all growing old.
The only person I really know who didn't have the chance to get old is my brother. But I feel bad thinking of him on Remembrance Day; it's for other people.
Still, November's about remembrance.
"What do you think," I saw a guy I recognize from local radio (I've been interviewed once for being a Lib Dem, once for being bi), "about those people just over there having fun, while you're here for this somber event?"
The park where Manchester holds its Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil is right near busy streets full of traffic and the bars of Canal Street. It was a weekend afternoon so of course people were laughing and calling to each other. Phones rang and buses zoomed by.
I couldn't hear the response of the person being interviewed, but I immediately knew what mine would be. We mourn death because life is a wonderful thing. Everybody should get the chance to talk and laugh like these people in the bars across the canal from us were doing. They don't ruin our memorial but illustrate why we make it: we cherish life, normal everyday life that so many of us take for granted. If all this weren't so sweet, we wouldn't mourn those we can no longer share it with, who helped make it so good.
One of the reasons I cried so much when my brother died is that I knew I wouldn't always cry like that. I couldn't help but think that some day this wound would heal over. It would leave its mark (I knew right away that I'd be wary of Thanksgiving forever), it would still hurt, but I'd get used to it.
I used to write about my brother all the time. I even wrote about my dread that I was running out of things to say, which is half about me getting used to him not being around and half that there aren't any new stories about him.
Even now I haven't talked about him at all, but only me.
As time stretches out between us I am less able to guess or imagine how these years would have changed him. He was 21 when he died, he'd have been 28 in a few weeks. My life changed unimaginably between 21 and 28.
I hope we would have been friends once he grew out of the teenage sullenness and dislike of his uncool sister. I miss him when I want someone to commiserate with about our parents, someone in my family I could talk to about what my life is actually like -- he knew about my first boyfriend before my parents did. If my suspicions are right, he could've talked to me about his being not-entirely straight, if he wanted to. I'd have told him I'm not. I hear my friends now talk about their grown-up relationships with siblings and it's a little difficult for me sometimes because I never got to try that.
But mostly it's fine; mostly nothing about it bothers me. The date doesn't bother me (I always say he's no more gone then than any other day). Thanksgiving doesn't exist in the place where spent all of them since, in the UK where no one knows what it is, and anyway Thanksgiving is more properly remembered for the genocide of millions of indigenous people than my one brother. (The date and the Thanksgiving holiday bother my parents, and thinking of them saddens me a lot... but this year they're away on a Caribbean cruise! Not their kind of thing at all but I think their friends coerced them to come along with them because they know what a hard time of year it is for them. My parents have awesome friends.)
So I think I'm doing really well this year. But it's still November, it's grey and cold, and the days are still getting shorter even though sunset's now at 4pm.
It's still a time for remembering the dead.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-11-25 02:15 pm (UTC)