Tectonic

My phone has become a phobic object for me.
Half of my passwords are his name, so I haven’t signed onto my online banking since July. He was the last person I Facetimed, and the only contact in my “Favorites” category. Every time I get a text, I think it might be him. I squint and avert my eyes while scrolling through my phone to find a picture of my frequent flier number because there are so many photos and videos of him. When I send an email to my parents, Gmail helpfully suggests adding his email address along with theirs.
Every time I inadvertently see his name or face I feel sick, disoriented, in danger. One night, drunk, I called his phone to hear his voicemail. I almost left a message. Instead I hung up and screamed.
Yesterday, Cecily and I went mountain biking at the Village for her last day of summer. She has been so brave — heartbreakingly, devastatingly, unjustly. We were on a mission to have fun, even though we both felt the sickness and sadness sliding underneath everything.
Then, the acquaintance who was selling the tickets asked, “How is Fuller?” My legs almost gave out. I looked down at Ceci’s, her eyes full, her expression like nothing I’ve seen before. I wondered how to respond in a way that would protect her from the answer, as though she isn’t living it every second, as if she doesn’t know. The words I needed to say somehow came out.
It didn’t feel like the correct response to “how is he?” So final. So bleak. So impossible.
I don’t know how he is. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know how I am. I don’t know where I am.
I feel more with him than with this acquaintance, though I’m staring at her living, breathing face. How to explain? How to not be crushed by the grief of others? How to skate on top of the cracking ice, how to avoid getting sucked under, trapped? How to tell Ceci “we’ll be ok” and mean it?
I used to love the question “how is your brother?” I loved to poke fun at him, brag about him — everyone knew how good he was, what an honor it was to be the one close to him, to have things to share about him.
He was the least complicated person in my family, the least complicated relationship I have. He was so easy to love. In a sometimes difficult and dysfunctional family, he was the relief, the one with the most perspective and kindness and hope. I talked about him all the time. “Oh Fuller and I were just talking about that,” I’d say, or “my brother and I…” When talking about feminism, Fuller was always the required caveat — “all men except my brother…”
I still think the words “my brother” over and over and over. Every time I do, I feel an aching hollowness. I can’t speak those word anymore, they’re too heavy. My throat catches and people look upset. I imagine all the people in the future who won’t know him, for whom the words “my brother” will be an abstract concept, a conversation ender.
I used to feel the ground when I said “my brother.” Now, I feel air without oxygen.
I have to move, this has to move.
A few days ago, I biked way up high, higher than I’d meant to. I sat on a rock and wept. I could see the mountain where we learned to ski, the river we rafted together every summer. I could see our elementary school, the road to the house we grew up in. I could see the place where we learned to ride horses, which is where his memorial was. How could we have known? I saw the rink where he spent endless hours skating, and the place he was supposed to work this summer.
I looked at the valley and thought “this is where everything happened, and that’s all it is. This is where a life happened.” His life happened along these roads, in those houses, in that school, on those slopes. I imagined that’s how he sees everything now — with distant affection, with unbothered peace and gratitude.
He can see it all and it’s all ok. He can see my parents and the ways they are suffering, and how hard that is. He can see that I’m trying to take care of Cecily and myself. He can see that we hurt and question and beg and fear, but he can also see that we’re nestled between mountains that are a part of a range that are the result of invisible tectonic plates that move beneath the ocean.
Somewhere, someone is screaming into the ocean. I’m screaming into the mountains. Our screams echo into each other until they dissipate into the air. Above us, there is a vastness that can hold it all.
