Tomorrow, of all days...

Stack his journals, pictures, clothes, and razor on the chair in the living room. Go through the box of pictures, pick out the best ones with him and his brother, the best ones from your wedding, one with your son playing his violin, and one of your daughter sitting on the front steps. Wash the clothes, throw away the razor, and start to read through his journal for good poems about his life, about nature, about Buddhism. Stop at the poem about your son, about the day the three of you trekked through a snow storm to get him to his violin lessons, about how you were the only ones who showed up that day and proudly announced that you were from New England. About time, and change, and how later when your son came home one weekend from college he was different. He had grown a beard. And the poem compared him to a snow angel, and how his arms grew wings and carried him away. He wrote about how he missed his son now that he was no longer living at home. How he didn’t feel like he knew him anymore.

Don’t play any Johnny Cash, it’ll make you cry. Wash the sheets so they don’t smell like him anymore. In fact: vacuum, clean the counters, take out the recycling, sweep the front porch, move each vase of flowers from the living room to the dining room and then back. Smell the flowers and know that in two weeks, they, too, will be gone. Get out all the necessary paperwork. Find it in his desk drawers and in the safe in the attic. Look at the paperwork; thumb through it like it makes sense, like you can concentrate on it, then put it away until tomorrow. Until your brother is there because he is good at handling all of the necessaries. Take Zeke on his walk, and remember his Frisbee. Wait.

Touch the New York Times Magazine that has sat on your couch since the day they called you out of class. Since the day your students wondered when you'd be back to teach English, and since they started sending cards saying: “We’re sorry for your loss.” Look again at the magazine and remember how you took it with you to the Emergency Room that day, thinking you would have to wait a couple hours before he was out of the hospital. Remember the nurses’ face as you asked to see him.

Fluff the couch cushions and put a kettle on the stove. Line all of the different teas on the clean counter. Get out the milk and sugar. Remind yourself to go to the store to get more milk. You’ll do that in a couple of days. When things have settled down and no one is leaving dinner or flowers on your doorstep. Wait.

Give long, intense hugs and watch your son and daughter pull their luggage across the room. Watch them hang up their coats, as they tell you that people will be there soon and that everything is ready and the food is on the way and that everything is going to be okay.

Show your daughter the flowers that a family of one of his students sent, and watch her scoff at the thought of it. Because to her, flowers don’t represent comfort, but anger and rage, and the replacement that smells up a corner of the room. Watch her walk into the kitchen and immediately begin to cry when she sees the calendar hanging on the wall, marked with School Staff Meetings at 7 p.m., a trip to Irvine, California, and then, on March 22nd, Ralph dies. Look at her touch the calendar, and then walk outside to the back porch and pick up the phone to call her friends in California.

Listen to each story about how he shaved his beard just above the lip so that a deaf student could read his lips. About how he wanted each student to feel comfortable in his classroom. Listen to how he took a deer off the highway and brought it to a butcher because it was such a waste not to. About how he drove past it on the highway twice and then decided to pull over, wrap it in his coat, and place it in the trunk. How you told him to take care of it, because a hanging deer in the middle of a Philadelphia suburb wasn’t exactly normal. But neither was he.

Watch as your two brothers and their families read about how he found God in nature, and how he hiked as much of the Appalachian Trail as possible. Until his sixty year-old body couldn’t take it anymore. Until he hit Pennsylvania and the green and mountains had become too much for his knees. Listen to your neighbors tell people how he darted across the street the first day they moved in to carry a coffee table and welcome them to Philadelphia. Watch your brother hand you a picture of him dancing a few months ago at your nephew’s wedding. Remember how he slid his thin legs across the marble floor, suspenders held tight against his chest, eyes closed in harmony with his own tune.

Listen to his patience, whispering in your ear that it will all be over soon, that things will settle down. That he will call any minute and tell you why he decided to ride his bike to the hospital the day he felt his shortness of breath, how a young girl was in the elevator when he hit his head on the rail, and fell over from a sudden heart attack. How lucky he was to be in the hospital, but how unlucky he was to have a small piece of plaque in an artery of his heart. How he loved the metal of that bike, and how much he appreciated the hospital returning it when he couldn’t. When he was returned in ashes and air and flowers and food and family you haven’t seen in many months, even years.

Wonder how you will survive the ceremony the next day. Wonder why his death is the only time his whole family could be in one room. Slowly watch people leave your house. Feel them hug you. Feel the cool air that brushes over you just after a hug, and then feel nothing.

***

Three years ago tomorrow I was living in Boston, across town from where my uncle grew up. I was in this writing group that met out at bars once a week and that week we decided to do a list writing exercise. I had just gotten back from my uncle's funeral when I wrote this, sitting at my kitchen table. I don't begin to know how my aunt was feeling, but I do know that when I wrote this, things began to heal for me. Even some of the truths I knew at the time, or some of the truths I've heard later, after I wrote this, don't matter in this writing exercise. In my small family, we don't always talk about things in the most candid way, but my aunt contains something very true and real about her. Especially after her husband died, it seems. Maybe nows the time to start writing a letter or email. I want to hear stories about her and my dad and their brother. And I don't even want to bother with the truth.

Bring on the Belated Birthday Wishes...

Amazingly enough I don't even mind the traffic in Los Angeles. Maybe it's just because I don't live here or maybe it's because every time I visit my best friend I want to pack up my stuff and move out here. Work for lululemon and do yoga and hang out on the beach in California. Surround myself in that creative air. Because that's really how I see LA, anyway.

Then come the excuses. It's too expensive. It's too superficial. It's too ridiculous. The biggest thing I've learned from living in Las Vegas: it's what you make of it.

A year ago yesterday I was hanging out with my two best friends in LA as well. It was the week I decided to move out here and quit my career counseling job. It was the week I starting realizing and feeling more like myself. I remember getting calls from east coast friends early in the morning last year, so I put my phone in the other room. This year, all my early morning calls came from west coast friends.

The silliest part about birthdays is it forces you to look back to what you were doing the year before. And each year, I'm amazed at how different my life is. How many changes I've gone through in that one year. Quitting my first real job. Moving across the country. Two break-ups. Starting a new job. Financial struggles. And I know that in a year, things will be completely different again. Maybe I won't be just visiting LA.

We took a yoga class yesterday where the instructor focused on duality. Meaning: bringing how you feel onto the mat and off of the mat. At one point he had us in a pose breathe out something that was bothering us or causing us pain. And instead of layers upon layers of things pouring into my head, some slow, subtle thoughts came to mind about what I can change in my life. What I know I can just breathe out and let go. And for the first time, I think I truly understood that.