Puppy Fuzz

Dear Michael,

Today would have been your 33rd birthday.

I remember your last birthday, like so many of the birthdays before it, spent down by the pond, jumping off the big rock and splashing with the bullfrogs. If I close my eyes, I can make myself stand right there in the tall grass, watching all of us cousins play, with Dad, and all our aunts and uncles nearby, helping to set up for a casual family party by the water. I can hear the low hum of Grampa's lawnmower in the distance as he makes his way down the path through the woods towards us. No doubt his wagon is loaded with picnic food: watermelon, corn on the cob, coleslaw and potato salad and barbecue chicken. And jello mold, of course. I always love seeing him ride across the field towards us, with his bad leg dangling off the side of the mower, a crooked wise-ass smirk on his face and a corny joke on his lips. You and him were cut from the same cloth, you know. Both too smart for your own good. I remember the day you earned your ironic nickname. Do you remember trampling through Nana's strawberry bushes in hot pursuit of a rabbit? When she caught a glimpse of you, covered in smooshed berries and her garden torn apart, she said to me: "If there were a patron saint of getting up to no good, your brother would be it. Hey that's what we'll call him, Saint Michael the Troublemaker!".

I remember that Nana made your favorite cake, as she always did: chocolate with peanut butter frosting, with thirteen already-burnt candles stuck deep in the softness. A remnant of her Great Depression upbringing: saving everything that might be used again, such as birthday candles, plastic silverware, and bread bags to line the insides of our boots in the winter. I can still see her opaque white Tupperware cake container where she put all of the cakes she made for any birthday or special event; I bet she still has that Tupperware.

Do you remember the giant inner tube Dad brought home from work, that we would toss in the water and jump off the Big Rock into? I can see it now like a photograph: you and me and Danny out here lined up for our turns to jump or dive through the center of the tube, our legs and backs browned from a summer of doing just this. Sometimes Dad would join in, too. Everything was so much simpler then. Never truly simple, but at least not as messed up as it feels now. There is something transcendent about those days by the pond, the way it would feel to have the sun dry the water off our skin as we raced to the picnic table for our supper after hours of swimming, hungry and growing towards the sun. Dad would reach out for your still-wet buzz-cut hair, rubbing his hand against it so that a fine mist sprayed all over the place. "Just like puppy fuzz," Dad would say. We would shake our heads like dogs to force the water from our ears, and elbow each other impatiently as Nana put out the food.

The puppies would flop themselves in the shade of the apple and pear trees at the far edge of the field. I have never seen three German Shepherds look less like German Shepherds than these: Eloise with her droopy ears and pitch black fur, Jax with his perky ears and pit-bull face, and Bruce, all lanky and shaggy with fur of patchy gray and brown. They grew up next to us in the shade of those trees by the pond; they are all gone now, Eloise and Jax and Bruce, and you. And Danny. And yet, here I sit, still talking to you after all these years, remembering your late summer birthdays before everything got all topsy-turvy.

In the fading sun our skin grew goosebumps as we scarfed down our dinner and eagerly leaned forward on our elbows while Nana lit the candles. After an off-key chorus of "Happy Birthday", you blew out the thirteen candles on your cake. Michael, its like I am transported there as I write this. I can taste the cake, I can smell the dense forest of goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace waving nearby in the light breeze, and in the background the symphony of bullfrogs punctuates the very last time we celebrated your life before you left.

You should be 33 today but you are forever thirteen, frozen in time and fossilized in a part of me I rarely touch anymore. Dad, too, lives frozen in time. I can't say I blame him. I have a child of my own now, you see, and the moment she was born I understood in a whole different way what Dad went through when we lost you. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

I stopped playing the game a long time ago, the one where I ask myself who you would be today. It hurt too much, because no matter how hard I imagined, you would never be anyone today. It has taken me years - nearly 20, in fact - to cope with what we lost. And truthfully, like with our mother, I carry you with me always. I used to feel guilt for surviving, for being healthy and remaining here when you could not; but now I feel like a gnarly oak tree growing around barbed wire. Think of the way it warps around the barbs and rejoins on the other side; think of the way it struggles and perseveres; think of how it becomes, even despite its transformation. I miss you terribly. I miss the boy who could run like lightning, who loved pickles and peanut butter (remember that time you tried them together?) and who couldn't learn French no matter how hard he tried. Even now it feels like an unholy loss, but in your absence we have carried on, still struggling, still persevering, still becoming.

Saint Michael, on this birthday, I only wish you peace. I hope that wherever you are, whatever part of you still remains in this universe, you are every bit as warm and safe and content as ever could be. I hope you feel my love carried on a breeze, I hope you know that you are still with me.

Love always,

Your baby sister