Forever Here

 Fifteen years ago. Everything changed.

The morning was pleasant. Working on a Dream was released. Bruce was going to sing at the Superbowl halftime show. The kids were at pre-school. I was at the Verizon office, and then out to lunch Jessica for her birthday.

Then Kathy called.

Jeff had a stroke.

My flight was booked. The kids would go with the ex.

Buffalo was in the midst of a snowstorm. Chuck picked me up at the airport. We went straight to the hospital. I lugged my suitcase in, up the elevator to the ICU. Everyone was in the waiting room – Cor, Cliff, Jim, Mom, Dad, John, Dana, Lynn…

Jeff. On life support with a breathing tube, swelling in his brain, bleeding.

Everything changed.

It’s okay that I’m sobbing. It’s okay. It means that I loved. That I love. That love exists in this world. It still exists because I feel the pain of my siblings, my mom. I hurt and love all who love Jeff, who remember him as a solid, vibrant, laughing, generous, broken soul.

Forever changed. Forever carrying grief in my heart like a tattoo. A tattoo that spreads to my head, swirling in the madness of loving and losing, wanting, and needing, disguised by time, cracked open in moments like this when I allow myself to remember, to feel and taste the pain again, to grieve.

It will linger through the day, through the rest of this month and next month. The memories of those six weeks when he was in the hospital, fighting for his life, offering hope and dismay, and hope again.

The smell of the hospital room, the tension in the waiting room. The notebook where we shared our thoughts. The doctor whistling in the elevator, the tune: “If I only had a brain”.

The kids greeting me at the hospital, their little suitcases trailing behind them. Their faces as they tried to understand why mommy was so scared, and sad, and hopeful, all at the same time.

My headphones playing Queen of the Supermarket, marveling at the line where her smile blows the whole fucking place apart.

The waiting room sofa where I attempted to sleep; across the room from Cliff.  When we gave up trying to sleep and getting a cup of black coffee in the early morning hours. Scared. Aware that something big had shifted, that maybe we’d never go back to how it was. How the family was whole. Intact.

The days that followed and then the weeks, and then plans for my birthday weekend. I would spend it with my brother in the rehab facility. I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

That Tuesday morning. The phone call from Mom. Falling to my knees and screaming “No.”

Maybe it’s not healthy to dwell. Maybe it’s not healthy to recall all these painful memories. Maybe it’s not right to know that even fifteen years later the pain is just as piercing, just as present, just as new as it was then. The pain of loving and losing and knowing love. Always secure in knowing that I hurt because I love. And because I love, I’m living. And because I love fully, he’s still living. In my heart, in my head, in the pain that grips me now.

He’s here and he’s still alive.