Such Sweet Sorrow

I don’t remember how old I was when Ryan died, drowned in some far off ocean off the coast of a country where they didn’t speak English.

I do remember the photos of our moms pregnant together, my mom telling me that they joked - halfway hoped - we would grow up and get married. Tangible evidence of us growing up side by side, those photographs, two kids with hair so blonde it shone silver in the sunlight. I remember sleepovers in bunkbeds and watching his pet iguana while we listened to Weird Al. I remember coming home in his dark brown shirt after some adventure or another left mine unwearable, sure I would give it back the next time I saw him.

I don’t remember feeling anything when my parents sat me down to tell me he was dead. The dining room table was patterned with the shadows of slatted white blinds drawn across the clear blue sky of a Florida day. Dead was something foreign and inarticulate, the earthen brown of a mummy with a wizened face and clawed fingers. Dead was a long time ago in a far away place, not something that happened in the here and now.

Not something that could happen to Ryan.

I remember walking upstairs alone and laying on the floor of his room when we went to visit, the whole house sodden and heavy with grief. There was a copy of the book Hatchet kicked under his bed, and I wondered how far he’d read. I remember the smell of him permeating his room, the surviving odds and ends and how solemn it all felt, but I don’t remember being sad.

I remember that they gradually faded into the background of our lives, this family that had once been so intrinsically intertwined into the lifeblood of our daily activities. My mom explaining gently that it was just too hard for his mom to see me, to see all of us. Hard to watch me grow up when he couldn’t, wouldn’t. Easier just to disappear.

I remember pulling his shirt out, the one I never got to return, and trying to will my memories into the weave of the fabric. I grew up and could never bring myself to part with that dark brown shirt, always neatly folded at the bottom of some dresser drawer. It went with me to college, and then to the group circle at the grief facilitator training session for the Center for Grieving Children where we were supposed to bring something that we associated with a death we had experienced.

I remember trying to say his name and immediately bursting into tears, an acrid, jagged burning that ripped through my chest as I clutched at his shirt like a tissue. I was utterly perplexed at the unexpectedness of it all, the grief forcibly grabbing me by my neck and demanding a reaction.

Hard to remember not feeling anything when all you can feel is everything.