This timeline is all out of order. It will probably be like that for a while because I can start to write and then I have to stop because I have to stop. Then I won't pick it up again until the middle of the night, the next morning, the next time my mind is racing, or I have a random thought.
The last two weeks have been a hellish blur and I can't believe I am flying back to Washington in two days. Church this morning was a flashback to the funeral when I did the second reading - a reading from the second letter of Saint Paul to Timothy. I could see the casket at the front of the church and smell the flowers and I feel heavy and sleepy and sad, sad, sad.
I have had a panicky feeling in my chest all morning and I finally figured out why.
I drove to Sayreville today to drop off my sister and nephew and had about an hour of quiet on the ride back to Long Valley by myself. Tears were just rolling down my cheeks and my throat was tight. I realized that I have been sleeping in my brother's room, smelling his smells, folding his laundry, walking on his carpet, and when I leave Tuesday that will mean he's really gone. Not just on a long ride, but gone. My brain can't comprehend that he's not coming back for his stuff, and someday how his things smell like him will fade. And I won't hear his boots on the tile in the kitchen anymore. I can hardly breathe. I am packing up some mementos to ship home for me and my kids. I feel like a thief, even though I know he won't need these things. He wasn't much for material things in life anyway, which is probably adding to my criminal feeling because anything he kept had a lot of meaning to him. I found a birthday card I sent him when he turned 50 in 2010. He kept that from me.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Shifting Gears
I started this blog over two years ago to chronicle my shenanigans in running and training for a measly 5k, during the course of which I was worried I would throw up or pass out. I haven't run in a while, so I didn't feel like I could post anything. Given the unfathomable shift that has recently occurred in my world, I have decided to chronicle not just running, but life in general, and my perspective on it. This is for me. If I never have another single reader, it's ok. For anyone who may read this, if one thing I say makes someone feel connected, I will considerate a blessed bonus. I am shifting gears because I have to, for me.
My brother is gone. If ever there were a punch to the gut letting me know it was time to think more about some things in life, this is it. It even sounds ridiculous to me that it would take tragedy to get me to realize this way. I have no answer for that. I am not writing for sympathy. I feel like I have to write because there's a lot coming in and out of my brain at once and I want to write it down, rather than talk about it. If anyone knows me, they know my ability to tell a cohesive story is challenged, at best. And right now I just don't want to talk about it very much. It sounds like a recording every time I say it - like a robot that is not me is saying these foreign, awful words. I keep thinking the more I say it, the more real it will become and it won't seem so strange and painful. That theory is not working.
My brother is gone. He was killed in a motorcycle accident on October 13, 2013. He was 53 years old, a world record setting long distance endurance motorcycle rider with over one million miles on a bike, and he was hit by a car on a perfectly sunny, dry, gorgeous fall day, and he died. It will haunt me for a good long time that no one from our family could be there with him when he left this planet. He was conscious at the scene for a bit and I keep thinking when he was laying there he thought, "Shit - that was a bad one." I know he would have never made an error in judgement that could have possibly caused this accident. I would stake my life on it. My family knows it, and the thousands of other people who rode with my brother know it, too.
He always wore a watch that was a gift from my grandfather. When I say "always", I mean the only day that watch has left his body since the late 80's was on the day he died. The stainless steel bracelet broke from the impact and flew into the grass median of the highway along with him. Thank God, thank God for an amazing fellow rider and good friend to my big brother that went to the accident site and found the bracelet part of the watch. He returned it to my mother on the day of the wake. The main watch case part is still missing.
The New Jersey State Police are a crew of absolute earth angels. They have offered sincerest condolences and any help they can provide. Today, they escorted my cousin and me to the accident scene to look for the watch. There we were, on the side of the highway, armed with a giant magnet on wheels scouring every inch of a section of the median, seventy feet long and twenty five feet wide. There is a race bib from a Garden State Motorcycle Rally with my brother's name written on it attached to the guard rail, placed there by someone who loved and admired my big brother. I placed an Iron Butt Association sticker there right next to it today. We didn't find the rest of the watch. I went in knowing the chances were minuscule, and that if he wanted us to have it, we would find it. Today I knelt down in the grass in the spot where my brother died. I kissed the ground, said a prayer and told him how much I loved him, and told him that he really must have loved that watch because I guess he took it with him. I came home with my cousin, shared the news with my parents, and ate pie. I decided that on the day I visited where my brother was killed, I was eating pie. It was the biggest thought I could wrap my head around today.
My brother is gone. If ever there were a punch to the gut letting me know it was time to think more about some things in life, this is it. It even sounds ridiculous to me that it would take tragedy to get me to realize this way. I have no answer for that. I am not writing for sympathy. I feel like I have to write because there's a lot coming in and out of my brain at once and I want to write it down, rather than talk about it. If anyone knows me, they know my ability to tell a cohesive story is challenged, at best. And right now I just don't want to talk about it very much. It sounds like a recording every time I say it - like a robot that is not me is saying these foreign, awful words. I keep thinking the more I say it, the more real it will become and it won't seem so strange and painful. That theory is not working.
My brother is gone. He was killed in a motorcycle accident on October 13, 2013. He was 53 years old, a world record setting long distance endurance motorcycle rider with over one million miles on a bike, and he was hit by a car on a perfectly sunny, dry, gorgeous fall day, and he died. It will haunt me for a good long time that no one from our family could be there with him when he left this planet. He was conscious at the scene for a bit and I keep thinking when he was laying there he thought, "Shit - that was a bad one." I know he would have never made an error in judgement that could have possibly caused this accident. I would stake my life on it. My family knows it, and the thousands of other people who rode with my brother know it, too.
He always wore a watch that was a gift from my grandfather. When I say "always", I mean the only day that watch has left his body since the late 80's was on the day he died. The stainless steel bracelet broke from the impact and flew into the grass median of the highway along with him. Thank God, thank God for an amazing fellow rider and good friend to my big brother that went to the accident site and found the bracelet part of the watch. He returned it to my mother on the day of the wake. The main watch case part is still missing.
The New Jersey State Police are a crew of absolute earth angels. They have offered sincerest condolences and any help they can provide. Today, they escorted my cousin and me to the accident scene to look for the watch. There we were, on the side of the highway, armed with a giant magnet on wheels scouring every inch of a section of the median, seventy feet long and twenty five feet wide. There is a race bib from a Garden State Motorcycle Rally with my brother's name written on it attached to the guard rail, placed there by someone who loved and admired my big brother. I placed an Iron Butt Association sticker there right next to it today. We didn't find the rest of the watch. I went in knowing the chances were minuscule, and that if he wanted us to have it, we would find it. Today I knelt down in the grass in the spot where my brother died. I kissed the ground, said a prayer and told him how much I loved him, and told him that he really must have loved that watch because I guess he took it with him. I came home with my cousin, shared the news with my parents, and ate pie. I decided that on the day I visited where my brother was killed, I was eating pie. It was the biggest thought I could wrap my head around today.
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