Summon Him

Aidan's birthday falls the day before Thanksgiving this year. He would have turned nineteen. 

He'd be in the middle of his freshman year at college. I'm guessing he would have chosen to take his post-secondary education slowly, to give himself more time to figure out where he was headed and how he wanted to get there. After four years of diverse learning opportunities as a home-schooled high-schooler, he would likely have already accumulated some community college credits.

I think there was some film-making in his future. His first novel would have been finished long ago. He probably would have found a publisher before me, darn him. He'd be writing poetry, and he'd have chapbooks on the shelves at Quimby's or Barbara's Bookstore. He might be starting to think about seminary.

I dreamed about him recently:

I was working a table at a school fundraiser. Papers, clipboards, and a cash-box littered the surface of a rectangular card table. 

Aidan sat on a metal folding chair behind the table. My tiny, white-haired boss walked through the door and hovered near us, flitting around like a nervous aunt in charge of the cookie table after a baptism in a small town church.

In front of me on the table, photographs and images of varying sizes were arranged on a wide poster board. Flimsy and uneven, most of the photos had been cut from magazines. Captions printed on strips of white computer paper lay with casual inelegance below the images. Some of the pictures had come loose. Others, I noticed, had not been placed carefully enough and covered portions of the captions.

As I tried to rearrange and re-attach the pictures, other pieces came loose and needed to be re-taped. I felt my anxiety building.

“I’m not old enough to help,” Aidan said. There was sadness and frustration in his voice.

“Well, you can help me fix this poster,” I said. I started to show him what I needed him to do with the tape and pictures. He smiled, but barely, concentrating with serious attention on the work at hand.

Somehow, even while I was talking to Aidan and demonstrating how to fix the board, I knew that he had died. I knew that he was no longer with us. It didn’t make sense—I didn’t understand how he could be there with me after he had died.

Maybe Kevin could explain it to me. I couldn’t make sense of it, but he would understand.

I stepped away and crouched down to dig my phone out of my purse. I briefly wondered what my boss would think about my getting out my phone to make a personal call right in the middle of the fundraising event.
 

I pressed the code to unlock the phone. The icons on the home page had been jumbled into a different order. I swiped and searched, looking for the phone app icon. Finally I opened the phone app—but I could not find the re-dial button, or the list of recent calls so I could call Kevin with the press of one button.

I couldn’t remember his phone number. I started to cry.

The phone was a lost cause, so I went off to find Kevin in person. He was sitting on the tuscan yellow leather couch at home. His dad sat on the other end of the couch, and his mom sat on a straight back chair.

“I have to ask you something,” I said. My crying turned into choking, gasping sobs that made it impossible to get the words out. I couldn’t even remember what words to use because I was so confused. 

Somehow I managed to force the words out of my mouth.

“I know that Aidan is dead,” I said. “I know that I can’t make new memories with him anymore.“ I sat down next to Kevin on the couch. His dad was nearby, and now we were all crying. “But he’s there with me, working at the table.”

Crying made it hard to breathe. I closed my eyes. In my mind I saw Aidan standing next to the table, leaning over the poster board where I had left him: cowlicky, flyaway hair; long, slender fingers; a gangly adolescent frame; his shoulders and chest slightly concave from having his chest cracked open several times.

“I don’t have memories of this—I’m making new memories of being there with him,” I said, still crying and gasping for breath. “I don’t understand how I can be making new memories with him when he’s gone.”

The dream ended. It had encapsulated a heartbreaking truth of loss: I will never make new memories with Aidan again, except in the fleeting, surreal images of my dreams.

If I could summon him to my dreams, I would sleep all the time.

Sixteen

Dear Internet,

Today's election day. It's also my birthday. 

l was born on election day sixteen years ago. I've read enough ancient history to know that Election 2000 was tightly contested. Al Gore won the popular vote, but George Bush won the electoral vote. (I don't really understand the electoral thing completely--but from the little bit I do know, I think we should get rid of it.)

My mom told me she voted for George Bush back then, and then again in 2004. I can't even with that. What was she thinking? Then she got her head straight and voted for Obama twice. 

I know she said her opinions have changed a lot over the years. This is another thing I don't really understand. She doesn't even get the difference between gender and sexuality--I had to explain it to her at dinner tonight. She sort of got it.

I said, "How can you not understand this?"

She said, "For fifty-five years my brain has been wired to think about it differently."

Old people. Sigh.

Now it's election day on my birthday again. It's another close one, but it looks like Amerikkka has gone and elected what seems to me to be a terrible person who says offensive things about women and Muslims and disabled people every time he opens his mouth.

I am not happy about living in a country led by a cartoonishly misogynistic serial philanderer who actually bragged about committing sexual assault. Who incites his scary followers to beat people up. Who threatens to kick Muslims out of the country.

I'm so disappointed in America. 

I'm only sixteen. I should not have to carry this burden of fear and disappointment about a whole country on my shoulders. I should have a couple more years to be carefree (ha) and lighthearted (double ha). But no. America goes and does this.

Thanks, America. Thanks for ruining my birthday.

M. Peevie, out.

Oh, I should mention my parents gave me a beautiful Andrew Bird poster for my birthday which I love. I'm giving my mom credit even though I'm positive my dad picked it out.  

Drink of Life Again

Dear Aidan,

It is a cruel element in the anatomy of grief that your birthdays continue to come and go even though you are not here.

You would have turned--should have turned--18 this year.

Every day I miss you, of course. But on your birthday, especially, I miss the marking of your journey toward adulthood. I am supposed to still be parenting you, helping you navigate this beautiful and scary passage. Soon we will reach the time when you would have (most likely) been gone from our house, living on your own. Adulting, as the kids say. But for now, I still grieve for the loss of young you, growing and maturing but still needing a mom and dad to help you along.

We spent the early morning of your birthday in the ER with M. Peevie, who passed out in the shower. It seemed an uncannily fitting way to start the day. You spent so much time there during your short life that the ER staff knew your name and your face. The scary circumstances evoked an egregious flashback to that traumatic day, three years and seventeen days ago, when we lost you.

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl observed,

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

For a long time, I felt unable to choose anything but grief and sadness. There were distractions, of course, primarily those that involve loving and taking care of my family. But everything else had been sucked into the black hole of grief.

Nothing is permanent except change. Now my grief is composed of the constant ache of your absence. Certain triggers cut my heart, and I cry: hearing American Pie, visiting your grave in the West Portal, an unexpected remembrance from a friend. But I am learning to live with this "new normal." I'm beginning to experience feelings other than grief, sadness, and depression. I am gradually gaining the strength to set aside grief in order to pursue meaning and purpose. I'm remembering to be grateful.

We spent the evening of your birthday eating pizza with your pals Ben, Nick, Alex, and Gabriel. Being with these boys--young men, really--gave me the feeling of having a part of you back for a time. I could almost picture you sitting at the table with us, abandoning your fear and anxiety and reveling in the silliness and comfort that these friendships brought you. 

Your pal Dr. Steve stopped by, too. We were so touched that he would take a break from the demands of his patients to celebrate and remember you with us. He loved you. He told me he thinks of you every day when he sees your poem on his desk. Your case comes up in his medical conferences frequently as the team of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons continue to improve their understanding of how best to care for their patients. He said that he has started recommending prophylactic cardiac catheterization to his asymptomatic teenage patients. If the parents decline, he tells them your story.

You are still having an impact on the world. I always knew you would.

All of us miss you terribly, darling. I wonder if you are OK. I want desperately to see you again, to receive a gangly, spontaneous hug from you, to hear your voice and your laugh. I yearn for the other side of eternity where the pain of losing you will be destroyed by joy and peace in the presence of Jesus.

When green buds hang in the elm like dust
And sprinkle the lime like rain,
Forth I wander, forth I must
And drink of life again.
Forth I must by hedgerow bowers
To look at the leaves uncurled
And stand in the fields where cuckoo flowers
Are lying about the world.                                            --A. E. Housman

Dear Aidan (Can you hear me?)

Dear Aidan,

Can you hear me?

On your birthday tomorrow we will be grieving the loss of yet another milestone that we don’t get to experience with you. You would be seventeen. You would have begged us to let you get your driving permit soon after you turned sixteen, and would probably be ready to take the test to get your license if you didn’t have it already. You’d been looking forward to driving since you were twelve or thirteen and trouncing everyone in Mario Kart.

Your friends are juniors in high school. They’re starting to write college essays, go on college visits, and narrow down their post-high school plans. It’s wrong that you don’t get to have those experiences, too—although your dad and I always said that you’d probably end up living in our basement until you were 30. What I wouldn't give.

I recently opened the birthday present that Grandmom and Granddad sent for you for your 15th birthday. You never got to open it. We stashed it behind the chair in our bedroom, ready to pull it out on your birthday. It was a sweater. You would have politely thanked them for the sweater--and you would have probably enjoyed wearing it, too. You were often cold, and you liked wearing layers to keep your skinny self warm.

They had also sent a Beatles souvenir book from the Beatles store in London, which they had recently visited. You would have pored over it, reciting facts about the Fab Four to anyone within earshot, and jotting down catalog numbers for your Christmas wish list: an All You Need is Love watch, a 
collection of plush band members, or maybe 
the complete book of sheet music for guitar including all 203 Beatles songs.

Ah, darling. I miss you. I hate that I can't know what you would be becoming, and see what new interests you would be developing, and how you would be changing as you grew closer to becoming a man. I want to make new memories with you, finish watching K-Pax with you, plan your new session of home school classes.

I miss talking to you, seeing you, touching you. You would hug me, hug all of us, SO OFTEN, like you could not get enough physical contact from the people you loved. 

Often I stand next to the table that holds your pictures, your poem, cards, and mementos. I re-read your poem, I look at the photographs of you and C. Peevie and M. Peevie, and I shake my head because it's not right that you are not here. It’s not right that we’re celebrating our own birthdays and watching each holiday come and go and taking family vacations without you.

M. Peevie just turned fourteen. You were fourteen when you left us--not quite fifteen, really. It's weird and impossible to get my mind around the fact that she has reached the same age as you, and in a short year will surpass your chronological age. This aspect of losing you, 
like many others, is confusing and surreal.

I did not know the work of mourning

Is like carrying a bag of cement

Up a mountain at night

The mountaintop is not in sight

Because there is no mountaintop

Poor Sisyphus grief

I did not know I would struggle

Through a ragged underbrush

Without an upward path

...

Look closely and you will see

Almost everyone carrying bags

Of cement on their shoulders

That’s why it takes courage

To get out of bed in the morning

And climb into the day.

― Edward Hirsch, Gabriel: A Poem

You used to talk about death and dying fairly often. "I'm afraid to go to sleep in case I don't wake up," you'd tell me in the middle of the night, and my heart would hurt. "Would you still talk about me if I died?"

The answer is yes. Some days, still, you're all I can think about, talk about, care about. Until we meet in eternity, darling boy, I hold you in my heart.

Happy birthday.

Love,
Mom

Fourteen

Hello to the upwards of seven loyal Green Room readers. M. Peevie here, for my annual birthday update.

I will be fourteen (fourteen-going-on-twenty-four, according to my mom) on Saturday, and I have invited a bunch of friends to my basement birthday party. The Doctor and Albert Einstein will both be there (in their life-size flat cardboard forms). I am nervous but also happy about my friends coming over. Nervous-but-happy is my near-constant condition, although sometimes I am nervous and cranky, depending on how tired and/or hungry I am.

(BTW, I hate it when I'm annoyed or upset and my mom tells me to eat something or take a nap. Yes, I might be hungry, or I might be tired, or both--but I'm also still legitimately annoyed or upset.)

School is going OK this year, except for the fact that I have one teacher that constantly misuses the English language. On the first day she used the non-word irregardless, and I instantly hated her. My mom has since informed me that irregardless may not be acceptable in Standard English usage, but it is, linguistically, a word. I do not care. It's ignorant. Don't judge me for being judgy.

I have another teacher who manages to make one of my favorite subjects boring. I love math. I read, or tried to read, a book awhile ago called Five Equations that Changed the World. It was really hard for me to read, because I was trying to understand it when I was only ten or eleven--but it presents math in a human context, which makes it more interesting. My teacher, on the other hand, presents math in a deadly dull context, and it's not acceptable.

I joined book club, writing club, and psychology club this year, which pretty much represents the things I love the most. Oh, and math team. Maybe I should start my own blog and write about these things. But who has time, what with Instagram (@MPeevie) and Pinterest, and all of my fangirl commitments.(I still fangirl the same fandoms as last year, but I've added a couple: Homestuck and Welcome to Night Vale.)

Probably the hardest part of my birthday this year is that I don't know how to think about being fourteen since my brother Aidan was fourteen when he died. How can I be the same age as my older brother? Also: I miss him a lot.

I almost forgot to mention that I started taking piano lessons. This is another source of great anxiety to me. I can never seem to practice enough, and everyone is always screaming at me to practice more and play perfectly! JK, no one ever says that. But I still feel nervous about it. I'm learning the Muse song Exogenesis (Part 3)--actually, I'm pretty much done learning it. It's pretty cool if I do say so myself.

Until next year, Internet (or until I start my own blog)...M. Peevie, out.


P.S.: I startted writing this before my birthday, but didn't get it posted. So my birthday was a few days ago, and my party was fun and BONUS: I got lots of presents from my family and friends. I love presents. 

Because my mom is reading this is I will say that my favorite present was this pair of socks.

Unabashed: Five Shopping Days to Go

My birthday is a day when I unabashedly receive all sorts of love and attention and presents from my minions, as well as from my friends and family.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm unabashed about receiving love and attention and presents every day of the year. But especially so on my birthday, and during my birth-week and birth-month.

Aidan in costume. Can you guess who he is?

Last year was the first year since 2008 that I did not post a birthday wish list. I only wanted one thing last year. I still want Aidan back. But now, after spending a year and a half figuring out how to put one foot in front of the other--which is essentially what grief is--I have found that I can find moments here and there of peace and joy and contentment, even while my heart is broken.

So, with no further ado, and with a mere five shopping days to go, here's my 2014 birthday wish list:

1. Say Aidan's name to me. This is very simple. You don't have to have a script. I was texting my friend Soap about some assorted topics, and then suddenly I get a text from her that just read "Aidan today." I texted back "Aidan today what?", and she said, "I am thinking about him and wanted to say his name to you." I loved this. 

2. The recovery of the 200+ Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by terrorists more than a month ago. I just heard that they've been located.

3. Diet Coke. I know, I know--it's bad for me. So is pollution, but I'm still gonna breathe.

4. A hanging flower pot for the backyard. It doesn't have to be this elaborate.

5. An agent or publisher for my almost-finished novel.

6. Good Lord Bird by James McBride. I despise and eschew our selfie culture, but I took a selfie anyway with my friend The Generous Listener (TGL) at #FFWgr because James McBride was signing autographs in the background. His book sounds like a delightful and completely new take on the John Brown story.

OK, that'll do it for this year. Happy shopping!

[Update: Apparently James McBride's people do not allow unauthorized use of James McBride's image on wildly popular personal blogs with upwards of seven loyal followers. OK, whatever.] 

Thirteen

Hello InterWebs,

M. Peevie here. I took a year off from guest blogging my annual birthday post on The Green Room. I was working on my post last year, didn't quite get it done, and then my brother Aidan died. As Mim has said, we lost our whimsy--and since these posts are generally chock-full of whimsy, I just could not hit "publish."

(Mim, or Mimsey, is one of my nicknames for my mom. C. Peevie came up with it. I am also fond of calling her by her first name, and I get a small rush of pleasure when her friends overhear this and make a shocked and horrified face. Mim doesn't mind, she said, as long as it doesn't feel like disrespect to her. I guess so far it doesn't.)

Me, Aidan and C. Peevie, December 2011

So. Aidan. Yeah. It's really hard to talk about that. I love to talk about Aidan, and I miss him all the time. Sometimes I wish my friends would talk to me more about him, and ask me about him. The part I don't want to talk about is how I feel about him dying or about how much I miss him, because I don't really have words for it, and I don't know how talking about it is going to make it any better. So I just sort of go along missing him, and remembering him, and telling Aidan stories when I get a chance.

So much has changed in my life since my last post when I turned 11. I am nearly thirteen now, and I am a different person.

I left my little school where I had lots of friends, and teachers who love worksheets and who sometimes seemed to love rules more than children, and went to a big school, Whitney Young. I went from having two brothers at home to no brothers at home because C. Peevie left for college in August. I went from being a pre-teen who likes big words like "anthropomorphism" to an actual teenager who still likes big words like "precipitously" and "petrichor" and "sesquipedalian." 

I went from getting straight As in school without breaking a sweat to getting almost straight As but definitely breaking a sweat. When I was 10, I wanted to go to DePaul on a softball scholarship. When I was 11, I wanted to go to MIT to study architecture and engineering. And now I have determined that it makes more sense to get a liberal arts education first, so I want to go to DePauw University, and then maybe MIT, or maybe somewhere else, depending on where the liberal arts take me.

My school is great. I have new friends (Hi MK! Hi BB! Hi Beckham!). I like that my classes help me understand important topics in our country like the Affordable Care Act, the debt ceiling, and the government shut-down. I made advanced honors band, which keeps me awake at night with anxiety. I have to keep up with kids who are in high school and who have A LOT more experience than I do. 

I am riding the school bus for the first time (boo) with other seventh and eighth graders who are loud and obnoxious and immature and annoying and stupid. They make me envy deaf people. I also take CTA now (yay), and have my own Ventra card.

It might interest you to know, InterWebs, that I have become a Fangirl. Fangirls are girls (duh) who are fans (duh) of certain TV shows, movies, and actors--but we are more than fans. We are obsessed. My particular areas of obsession include Doctor Who, Sherlock (the BBC version), Supernatural, and the Marvel Universe. I'm pretty sure that Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, and David Tennant all love me as much as I love them, which is a lot.

Oh, and I am now a card-carrying Nerdfighter--one who is not ashamed to be intelligent, and who fights to decrease WorldSuck. Nerdfighters are entirely composed of awesome. I highly recommend that you check out the books of the Nerdfighter in Chief, John Green, and in particular, The Fault in our Stars, which I have read multiple times.

That is about enough for now. This is M. Peevie, signing off.