Editor’s Choice Award
The Art of Surviving Death
by Uriel Bermoy
1. You won’t see it coming. You’ll think that the duty brought you down because they saw that you broke the bank buying tickets to fly home, even though it didn’t work out. You’ll think that you’re in trouble for something you did, though you won’t know exactly what. You’ll start to wonder as they tell you that you need to call home. You’ll wonder if something happened to your mom, especially when they tell you it might be best to call your dad instead, but you’ll never guess your little brother. Your dad will cut straight to the chase, because that’s how he is and how else do you break that kind of news. You won’t believe it at first. You’ll think it’s a trick. You’ll think that your mom told them you weren’t able to come home, so they made it all up to get you back anyway. You’ll think that it’s a dumb idea, because everyone will figure it out when you talk about your brother later, and then you’ll get in huge trouble. You’ll realize that you know it’s true when you try to talk, and the words rake through your throat as it closes around them: Are you serious?
2. You won’t cry around people, not yet, that shit’s for the shower and the privacy of a six-by-six bathroom. You’ll hear your buddy from next door, who’s spent the weekend with you and your roommate playing Pay Day 2, listening. You’ll tell yourself that you’re crying quieter, so he won’t hear, but you won’t, because all you really want is for someone to grill you for answers and offer a shoulder. I think he’s crying in there. He’ll say, his voice low. Neither knows what happened, you couldn’t talk when you got back, so you just went straight to the bathroom, and neither will straight-out ask about it. Even if they did you wouldn’t be able to give much of an answer, you can’t talk about it yet.
3. You’ll worry whether you’re a bad person for not talking to your mom. You’ll feel like you are, ducking her calls, only giving vague responses to her messages, but you’re not. You can only imagine what she’s going through, you lost a brother, while she lost a son, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s not like you don’t want to talk to her, it’s that you can’t. She cries over everything, she always has: America’s Got Talent, she cries at greatness, Marley and Me, she cries at animals, a kind message from you, she just gets too touched. You know that you need to be the pillar, Dad doesn’t do emotion, Ar is too emotional, Mom is just a wreck. Z was the comforter, but he’s gone, so all you can do, is be strong enough for the others to lean on, but you’ll shatter the moment she starts sobbing through the phone.
4. You’ll hate people. Not a real, deep, I want you to die, kind of hate, but a bitter, half-put-together string of mental gurgles bound in indignant rage and the occasional shriek. You’ll feel it every time you get one of those, I know how it feels… I lost my grandparents… my best friend… my dog, because no one really knows what you feel. Every relationship is different, so every mourning is different. The person whose friend died; do they know what it’s like to hate the one you’re mourning more often than you loved them? For 16 years? The person whose grandparents died; do they know how it is to feel like you failed them? That you were supposed to protect them, but couldn’t because you were 1,000 miles away? Or because you misunderstood your Staff Sergeant, and rather than flying home and keeping him away from the car that night, you were in your room playing Payday? And those who mention their pets, do they not realize how it feels to hear him compared to an animal? But I suppose every mourning is different, and maybe they all really do know a bit about how it feels, but in those moments, it’s the last thing you want to hear.
5. When you get home it’ll all be over. People will still be heartbroken, you’ll still get all those condolences again, this time face-to-face, but the vigils, the ceremonies, the releasing of balloons in the park, it all happened days after and a week’s gone by. The high school will have chalk stairs already fading on the side of the gym, the walkways will have messages strung from the ceiling, both hanging and spanning the width, notices for those who need to talk, farewells to your brother and the two others who were in the car, and solemn notes to God, bidding him take care of all three. You’ll meet his teacher who gives you a copy of his motto essay, the one you’ll read during his Celebration of Life, and tells you how much she loved him. You’ll see everyone and everything but him. It’s this omission that makes it all so surreal, that makes it feel more like it’s just been forever since you’ve seen him than that you’ll never see him again. There’s no body or goodbye, just a bag of ash and bone.
6. Some people will say the Celebration of Life is inappropriate. They’ll want to wear black and cry and stand around holding one another, not listen to music and laugh in pinks and blues. They’ll look down on your mom for it and you’ll want to throttle them. Not some Tom and Jerry head-rattling affair, but a real face-reddening, then purpling, eye-bulging and tongue-swelling strangling. You don’t know who said it, but your mom will tell you that people did. Who the fuck said that? You’ll growl, the words like gravel in your throat. It doesn’t matter. She’ll say, They just don’t understand the way our family does things. The way we see death. But you’ll still think about it from time to time, even years later, and while the anger won’t be as hot, the muscles around your jaw will still work and your breathing will get just a bit quicker. She’ll say that they were hurting too, that what they needed was different from what your family needed, but you won’t care, he was your blood and it was your choice, not theirs.
7. You’ll go over the page again and again, memorizing each pause and pitch, tasting the words with different seasoning and size until you settle into the way you’re going to read it. Your mom will call everyone over, and you’ll wait a few heartbeats, though it won’t be enough for everyone to get there, you’ll regret that later, but every time you do you’ll also think, fuck them, I was going through my own shit. You’ll remember reading it perfect. You won’t stumble, stutter, or break. Your throat will get hot and you’ll play catch with your friends when you’re done, and race headfirst into the thorn bush after the ball, not caring about the scrapes and scratches, but at least you’ll read it damned perfect.
8. The family will go down to the lake. Your mom, red-eyed and shaking, will stand at the water’s edge clutching the cardboard box with the Ziploc bag of your brother to her chest. Someone, maybe you, maybe not, will say something that you won’t remember the next day, or even ten minutes later, and she’ll pour half the bag into his favorite place. Still crying, she’ll hug you, gasping that you’re not allowed to die, unfair demands for an infantryman, but you’ll take it to heart.
9. The other half of the bag is kept, given to friends and family if they want it. You’ll bring some and spread it everywhere your travels take you, shithole of haven, so that he’s seen as much of the world as you have, and the boring brevity of his life hurts a little less.
10. Your roommate, not the one that was there the day you found out, will see the pill bottle with your brother’s ashes in it and ask to look at it. He’ll turn it over in his tiny, chapped hands, laughing in his mulish way that there’s bone in it, something you’d never noticed before, and you’ll rip it away, murdering him with your mind as your other roommate asks him what the fuck is wrong with him. He’ll eventually get kicked out of the Corps for about a dozen different reasons.
11. You’ll need to talk about it. You’ll figure that out quickly, but you won’t do it. You can’t talk to Mom, Dad wouldn’t understand, Ar is too messed up by it and determined to move on and your friends are scattered to the other three branches. You’ve only been in the unit for a month or two, so there’s not really anyone there to talk with either, but they’ll offer. You’ll love them for that, but you won’t do it, it’ll feel weak, in a demented, you-know-it’s-really-not kind of way, and you still can’t bring yourself to cry in front of others. It’ll be at least a year before you start bringing him up in casual conversation and the rotting, festering pit in your stomach will slow its spread some after you do, but it’ll still be there, eating away at you bit by bit. Another half a year later, you’ll try talking with a friend, but he won’t know what you need. Won’t understand that you just want to voice the fear that it was your fault, that you should have been home, he’ll tell you that it wasn’t, that sometimes stuff just happens and you can’t think that way, as if you didn’t already know that. But knowledge does little to stop the doubts from crawling like worms at the edges of your mind.
12. The rot will reach its worst just about the time you realize that you haven’t talked to God since a month after Z died and haven’t prayed since before then. You’ll be sitting at a field service, the first you’ve attended in a long time and suddenly feel warm. Your chest will get tight and your throat will ache, you’ll feel all the love you’ve ever felt for God in that moment, and you’ll thank the chaplain before going to the Porta-John and crying for the first time in months, a great weight lifting from your shoulders. You’ll talk to Him again, beg His forgiveness for drifting away, and pledge yourself once more. You’ll never again be as close as at that moment, nor as close as you were before it all, but you’ll reconnect, slowly, more like old friends who haven’t seen one another in ages than a father and his son.
13. The trick to living after a death, is knowing that there is no trick and if there’s an art it’s some vague impressionistic bullshit, that changes from viewer to viewer and mourner to mourner, cuts of paint webbed over white like a shattered windshield, or shards of a taillight on the street. It’s rough and unrefined, wild and lusty and angry, hateful and longing and sad and numb and it will change you. You’ll grow cold, apathetic, you’ll feel emotion fade like ash in a lake or memory in time, and you’ll mourn that part of you that died, almost as much as the one it died with. But you will live, and you will love, and in your lover’s arms you will find comfort and in their eyes reason to go on, and you will thank God that you made it through, despite at times wishing you wouldn’t.