Ten years today
I’ve never woken up so close to the sea.
That was this morning. Let’s start with yesterday. I’m three quarters of the way through a bloody at the Bubby’s in the new Laguardia terminal and my forty-minute flight to Maine is four hours delayed. Gretchen’s parents sold their seaside summer house and this is my last chance to see it. The trip also happens to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of Trey’s death. I considered giving up as my flight got more and more delayed and asking my crush to come pick me up, but the thought of waking up in NYC today with both of my bffs out of town felt like a surefire meltdown.
I want to say something profound about grief. I guess I always want to say something profound about literally anything. But I don’t even know if I count as someone grieving. When the molly was wearing off last weekend, I remember realizing it was ten years coming up and feeling more and more like he never existed. People on Facebook are always saying something dumb about “keeping the memory alive,” but I’ve become more reticent to allow myself that as it feels indulgent and tbh obnoxious. Or maybe I just need to find new outlets. Twice-yearly Instagram posts letting all my new followers know I have a rich interiority because my brother was depressed and jumped off a bridge may have ridden their course. I took a class my senior of high school that was created solely to do a close reading of Moby Dick and take trips to the New Hampshire seacoast at sunrise to read our favorite passages. I was convinced Melville had unlocked something in the grief process for me. I likened Ishmael’s musings on the sea to my brother’s: recognition of subtle treachery in what lies underneath a placid surface, an inability to avoid its pull despite the verdant land being gentle and safe, a completely fucking nuts inclination to surrender your body to the thing that formed you. Trey acknowledged it, too. “There is a certain sense of irony involved in choosing to end my life in the one thing that’s always pushing forward.” He didn’t have any push. I have so much. I’m just not really sure in which direction it’s supposed to go.
It’s hard to know who I’m keeping the memory alive for. If it’s just for me, I start to resent the people around me who don’t get it. Which is insane because why the fuck would they ever get it? It’s definitely not for my dad. Talking to him about it makes me feel like we’re all helpless beyond repair. My mom is just a sweetheart who’s made bliss her one and only goal after loss and somehow managed to find it in every form. I think my insular Tahiti is coastal New England. I’ve never woken up so close to the sea. I’m in the greenest place, though green kind of makes the water look grey. No tints of azure in sight. Do you think if Trey wasn’t able to find his insular Tahiti here, he found it somewhere else? 20 is just so fucking young. I wouldn’t give a 20-year-old’s opinion a second thought now and here I am making bible what he wrote to me as he sat on top of the bridge from Springbreakers writing statistics about rape. I’ll be the last person to remember my brother and it already feels I’m grasping at ideas of who he might have turned out to be. I wonder if I’m destined to feel resentful towards people who don’t recognize in me some deep, twisted pain. Against all odds, I am blissful not haunted. For sure angry, but not haunted.
My mom overnighted me some ashes, but also I’m in boonies Maine so who knows if they’ll make it. She’s taken him everywhere – I stopped years ago. I felt guilty after bringing him to Rockaway. No one should have to endure those truly putrid waters. It’s unclear whether ten years marks some kind of chapter close or if I’m reaching for reason. I do think I’ll stop with the Instagram posts though. They break up the feed in a weird way.
Gretchen’s mom only has Lactaid in the house and the water still looks grey. I’ll leave this here in case you have literally no idea what I’m talking about.