Ash and Red Satin….That February

February is for lovers… Red Roses and “I love you”s.

It was today, February 1st, 22 years ago, when my father came running through the door with a panicked look I rarely saw on his typically unfettered face.

“Where’s your mother?” He was out of breath.

She had left to go pick up my little sister. It was just me … and Dad.

I don’t know if it was pain or shock, fear or a sickening confirmation of what we’d already thought (but not yet said out loud), that I saw in his eyes that day. But I can still see them, as I looked up at him in the dimly lit room, that February afternoon.

His face should have been flushed from the run but instead it was ashen.

“They found your brother. He’s … dead. He’s dead honey.”

My Dad held me and we cried for just a few short minutes and then I wiped my tears and said, “We have a lot to do.” I put my grief in my back pocket and started making the list for phone calls. It would be a long time before I really cried.

We had all thought it. He’d been missing for 10 days. We knew he was ill. We knew it was winter. We knew 10 days was a long time.

But he was a wanderer. He was untethered. And he blew where the wind took him, or the booze. Inside all of us was the hope that he’d wander back, with his sheepish grin and his black boots and chains and a quiet “I’m sorry”. And for both him and us, we wanted another chance… another hug… another “I love you.” Our hearts yearned for more time and our souls pleaded for another chance to help him.

But time and chances run out and so does luck. We buried my brother two weeks before his 18th birthday- his birth and death dates in the same month. Death by suicide, complicated by a high blood-alcohol level and a history of mental illness.

And I was forever changed.

Loss affects us all, no matter what age we are when we experience that loss. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something about experiencing a significant loss during that most vulnerable time in life, when you are old enough to understand it but before you’re mature enough to handle it, that makes a particularly profound impact on your sense of self. Like disturbing a cake when it’s no longer batter but before it’s cooked solid, do the shock waves of loss alter how you develop and who you become? The surface of my heart, lumpy now and tough in spots, tells the story of those waves and my journey in pain. Would it have been different if I had been older, or younger even? Or am I just searching for significance again?

When I learned more of my brother’s reports of psychiatric symptoms, I developed a passion and preoccupation with Mental Health. I wanted to understand and I wanted to help. Addiction too. The crazies and the addicts weren’t scary people to me…they were my brother. The geeks and the outcasts, the artists and the freaks, were endearing to me. I hated the straight-laced, popular kids and those who belittled others. I gained appreciation for oddities and a new life perspective.

But not all of my change was gain. I also lost. I lost my faith. I lost my way. And I lost friends. With his death and a crumbling structure at home, I came to learn that nothing in life was safe or predictable. Confirmed by my own fears coming to fruition and in avoidance of false hope and disappointment, I came to always expect the worst. I disdain regret. I am afraid of missed opportunities. And hope is a slippery ideal that I struggle to keep a gripe on. I learned at 14 years of age that the worst case scenario happens…and sometimes it happens to me. Prayers don’t always save people and not everyone will understand or accept your baggage.

Prior to my brother’s death, I had already come to acquire some pretty hefty emotional armor. And after it, I carried around a fucking axe and bayonet.

Some viewed me as “resilient” and others as “hardened.” It was just self-preservation. And until I found myself a safe relationship where I could finally be vulnerable and let my guard down, I rarely cried. And new losses got packed away in all the rest of my shitty-ass boxes.

But I did come out on the other side. I did survive. And now, I am conquering.

While I will forever live with the pain and regret of not being able to save my brother, I’ll be damned if I don’t go down fighting for others. I learned, through his death, that you can’t save them all, but you certainly can try. At the very least, I can try to understand others and meet them where they are- however “damaged”, however “hopeless”, however “unsalvageable” they might seem.

The ground was frozen the day we buried him. Red roses covered his casket-his favorite flower. Interspersed amongst the grandparents and cousins, coworkers and conservatives, were a gangly group of teens trying to grieve. Blue mohawks and shaved heads, chains and black boots, gathered around the casket after the family, but before it was lowered, to “have one last smoke.” And they tossed their cigarette butts into the red petals.

I think about that image sometimes, ash on red satin, and the symbolism that it holds. Beauty in death, endings and new beginnings, significance in loss, finding a way to grieve, burning pain and imperfections, scars. And my journey makes even more sense.

That February I learned how to stand in a funeral line. I learned how to smile and pretend that I was okay. I learned that everyone grieves differently. And I learned the fragility of life and the human spirit. The other lessons came later.

If February is for lovers than this February I challenge you, while you’re out picking up that bouquet and box of chocolates, to remember that love isn’t always romance and it isn’t always perfect. Love is accepting the human spirit and embracing it wherever it is. This month, reach out to someone who might be hurting. Smile at the outcasts. Stop and lend someone a hand. Check-in with that person that you know might be struggling. Make a call you’ve been avoiding.

As you live your busy life, someone around you is making a plan to end it. Someone is misunderstood. Someone is hurting behind the facade of their smile. And someone just said a very hard good-bye. You may very well never know who those people are, be kind anyways.

As I walked away from his grave, my feet crunched in the frozen grass. My head hung low and despite the crowd, I never felt so alone. Like the rose petals, on the satin surface of my heart, red-hot ash slowly burned a hole. A hole that could never be filled- like pulling a candle out of a birthday cake that would never be made. Burns always leave a scar.

Submersed now, in safety and love, the edges have healed and it no longer bleeds when you touch it. But every February, every holiday, every life event… it still throbs… to remind me to continue loving until the candles are all blown out and the petals are lowered into the ground.