one year/year one

Last Thursday, October 28, marked one year since my older brother Josh passed away. Today marks one year since I was flying home from London for his funeral. Tuesday will be one year since his funeral.

It is hard to talk and write about everything in a way that is accurate or really depicts how I feel. Thursday was a hard day. It was a good day, but hard. One of my best friends in the world reached out to me to make sure I was doing okay, which meant the world to me. I was convinced that nobody would remember. Several people reached out to our family in general to express sympathy and to offer words of comfort and prayers.

I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about where I was, what I was doing, the day that it happened. I had just gotten back to London after spending a few days in Grasmere in the Lake District with two of my very best friends. We took my friend Quinn out to dinner at an absolutely gorgeous Indian restaurant in Kensington that night to celebrate her receiving her master’s degree. I ordered lamb chops and they were sooooo spicy. Then they brought us cinnamon ice cream for dessert, which was incredibly yummy despite how skeptical I was.

Then I went back to my flat and washed the new sheets and blankets I’d gotten for my bed. I was so excited to get it all made up and looking fabulous. Then I watched MasterChef and drank a soda while I waited for the load to finish. That’s when my little sister called to tell me that my brother Josh had passed away.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur. I’ve been thinking about how I went back downstairs to the laundry room, gathered up my washed things, and made my bed as though nothing had happened. While I was still in shock. I’ve been thinking about how I sat on my bed and sobbed. How my best friend back in America did everything short of getting on the next flight to London to try to help. How others stayed on the phone with me until the early hours of the morning until I could finally fall asleep. How, a few hours after that, my friends in London rushed to my flat with chocolate and biscuits and soda and bread and chamomile tea. I’ve been thinking about how I cried on the way home on the airplane and the flight attendant brought me a bottle of water.

A few days ago was one year since the viewing. I’ve never cried so much in my life as I did that day. There weren’t as many people there as there should have been, and that still hurts. It was interesting how the majority of the people who came through the line were there to pay their respects, but somehow we as the family ended up comforting them. There were only a few people who came through the line that night who actually comforted us. There is a man named Jack who my brother was very close to, and when he came through and hugged me, I couldn’t stop crying. And he just held me.

This first year without Josh has been a lot of things. It has been hard in ways I never imagined. One of the very hardest things is how people stop checking in and wondering how you are so quickly. Only two weeks after he passed away, I felt this immense pressure to be over it and be okay. It was horrible. Because it isn’t the kind of thing that you ever get over. You just learn how to deal with it. Two of my sisters-in-law have lost brothers, and soon after Josh passed away I asked them both, on separate occasions, if it ever gets better. And they both said the same thing, “No, it doesn’t. It never gets easier. You just get better at living with it.”

Three weeks ago I got my first puppy. It was such a dream come true. I’ve been thinking about getting a puppy for, well obviously I’ve wanted one of my own for forever, but the last six months it has been heavily on my mind. It felt like the Holy Ghost told me to start thinking about getting one as soon as my degree was over. So I thought about it a lot. I’ve wanted an English Cocker Spaniel for years, and so I started doing more research and figuring out how I’d do it depending on whether I stayed in London or came home.

Well, when I came home from London I was thrust in the middle of tons of really hard things and my family kind of falling apart, so I figured that I should probably wait. Well, then the Holy Ghost said, “So… what if you didn’t wait?” So I thought about it some more, prayed about it A LOT, and before I knew it, my little Duncan was here all the way from Georgia. (Don’t even get me started on how hard it is to find an English Cocker Spaniel in Idaho.)

I named him Duncan because it is a very strong Scottish name, which is, obviously, very important to me. He has two middle names, both of them Viking names: Ubbe Halvar. He knows his name very well, except he always looks at me a bit sideways if I ever call him by his full name. (Just in case you were wondering, “Ubbe” is pronounced Oo-buh.) He was just under three months old when he got here and sooooo tiny. He’s grown quite a bit, but he’s still very small. I love it. He loves snuggling with me before bed and running around like crazy in the morning. He follows me everywhere and always has lots of kisses for me. He has loved me unconditionally from the moment he was placed in my arms. He knew right away that he was home and that he was mine.

Having a puppy has been so exhausting and so beautiful and such a dream come true. And it has been one of those experiences that causes this strange and very sharp ache in my heart because Josh isn’t here to see it. Josh loved dogs. He was very close to my sister’s dog Finn. They used to play and snuggle together all the time. My mom and my sister both reminded me that Duncan was with Josh not too long ago, which does help. I know he already knows him. But it’s just one more thing on a very, very long list of things Josh isn’t physically here for.

One year is a very significant thing. I don’t have to always wonder, “I wonder what Josh was doing at this time last year.” All of the hard firsts are out of the way, and I guess in some ways that’s a blessing. But the hard truth is that it’s just year one. Year one in a long line of years without my brother. If I was one of those psychopaths who wanted to live to be over 100, that’s another 80 years without my brother. My siblings and I will all age and grow. Keep having kids, moving, changing, aging, eventually have grandchildren. Eventually, get old and gray. And Josh will still be 34, looking out at us from the photos we have. It’s unfathomable in so many ways.

Especially now that I’m home, I still keep expecting his car to pull up at any moment, for him to jump out to come to have dinner or watch a movie or show us his latest art projects. I know that that will never happen again. And somehow I still wait for it.

We have a very special spot on the farm, not far from our house, that is a memorial spot for Josh. It is on the edge of the canyon where he loved to go and film and take pictures. We have benches made of stone and a firepit, and nearby is a special box we buried last year full of things for him. I’ve only been there twice since coming home, once to talk to Josh about getting a puppy. And on Thursday we went and lit a fire, just my mom, my sister, and me. I’d like to take Duncan there, just the two of us, to spend some time. Hopefully, I can get that done before the weather truly decides that it’s winter.