Wish you were here?

Everyone knows by now that I write something on the anniversary of the day Tom up and left.  I think about it all the time as July approaches.  How am I feeling this year?  What has changed?  Anything?

In truth, nothing has changed.......and every damn thing has changed.  How I feel about Tom will never alter, including the grief and the missing.  But oh my god, has the world shifted on it's axis and now seems poised to just implode in hopeless frustration.  

(Sorry Universe.  We totally blew it.  People are idiots and should never have been given free reign here.)

When Tom was first diagnosed, he was very calm...almost relieved.  He said he thought it would good to get out while the getting was good...to leave at the top of his game.  Of course I resisted that idea, but it was obvious he was resigned to it and really never waivered throughout the whole process.

Now, when everything is so much worse here, it is really tempting to wish he were here.  I'd love to be able to call him, knowing exactly how he'd react ... which would be the same way I was.

But why would I want him to be dealing with everything we are?  

It is so much better to imagine him in some kind of heaven that looks a lot like Hawaii, blissfully doing what he wants, detached from the realities we wake up to everyday... but, of course, still benignly and lovingly jumping in now and then to remind us that he sees us and is still really there.

It makes me feel to good to believe it. 

So I'm going with it.

Faded

Tom had the best memorial service I'd ever been to.  It was held in a small downtown art gallery at night, and the room was full of candles and light.  Their glow was warm and sacred, but not in that creepy way that makes you squirm in your seat.  It was like a fairyland of sparkles, inviting you to come in.  Half of the room was set up with chairs, but the other  side of the room was filled with art pieces made by his friends, to remember him, express their love for him, and bathe us all in a breathtaking homage to who he was and how he affected the people around him.

I came to the event in a state of deep grief ... and almost uncontrollable rage.  I knew that I would see  some people who had made his life so miserable in his last years, and I wasn't sure I could control myself when I did.  

So I decided to take one of his paintings....the one of a person flying away from this world....and put it on a t-shirt to wear that night.  It felt like putting on armor, like holding him very close to my heart, and I needed it that night.  

My job was to greet people as they came in, and give them the memorial brochure. I never anticipated that over 250 people would show up, but I wasn't really surprised.  Tom could make friends with the check out lady at the market....anyone, really.  He put people at ease, make an instant connection, and ...almost always...make them laugh.  

In the days leading up to the memorial, I imagined seeing the villains in his life and how I would react to them.  In my mind, every single one of them would be 'so sorry for our loss' and would 'miss him so much'.  They would tell me how terrific and talented and fun he was.  Then wait for me to say something comforting and welcoming.

I dreamed of looking them directly in the eye, and watching them squirm.  There would be a delicious silence as I stared at them until they realized I knew exactly what hypocrites they were....how cruel they were to take away his joy.  His life.   (Yes, I still blame them).

Somehow, my better self prevailed.  I suppose Tom would have been disappointed in me if it hadn't.  They walked into the room, and the beautiful, painful, perfect memorial service...exactly the kind of thing Tom would have wanted and loved...began. 

So now, 12 years later, I look at the t-shirt I wore that night and the image is so faded I can barely see it. It is worn and stained and out of shape, but of course I still wear it and always will.  The nearly absent image made me think about how people tell you that your painful grief will also 'fade'.  You are told that over time the brittle suffering of the first years will mellow into a montage of wonderful memories of the person you love and miss.  No longer will anything and everything remind you of them, bringing you to tears.  Instead, you'll have peace and warm comforting images in your heart and mind.

It's true that grief transforms.  But I'm not sure that the intensity of pain in those shocking and usually surprising moments of remembering really diminishes.  For me, it's like burning your hand on the stove.....you rarely do it, but every single time it will sting and leave another scar.  

And I'm glad it does.  It means that he is still very real in my heart.  He is so important to me that he can't just waltz out of here and be forgotten.  I know he would much rather we all got on with our lives and were happy.  He told me that before he left.  

But I'm sorry, Tom.  That isn't going to happen.

I still have my t-shirt. 

   

"I have had a wonderful life. I wish you the same" Thomas Rubick July 2009

"Your sadness is not my sadness, he said in an aloof manner, like a snotty know it all doody head"

                                              Thomas Rubick   1-12-09

Liberty Crumbling...

Before he died, Tom said he was in his prime and ‘this is a good time to go”.  It surprised me, because I couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to leave a minute before they had to.  

But now, eleven years later, ...Trump and Coronavirus and the near-complete destruction of everything later... I think he might have been right.

Whether he was prescient, or just ready to move on, he got the hell out of here just in time.

Who could have imagined the incomprehensible rise of Donald, and the Pandora's Box of vile, destructive, hateful chaos that he has unleashed on all of us? Tom missed the collapse of two branches of Government, the easy capitulation of the Republicans, the willful destruction of international alliances and treaties, and the empowerment of masses of people, who are now able to publicly embrace, flaunt, and operationalize their blatant racism and right-wing extremism.

This gut-wrenching swirl of disturbing words didn't exist then:  Sandy Hook, Gabrielle Giffords, Boston Marathon Bombing, President Donald Trump, Mueller Investigation, Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School, Kim Jon-un, Standing Rock Protest, Church-Synagogue-Walmart-Vegas Mass Murder, Charlottesville, Pulse Nightclub, Me Too, Children in Cages, the Wall, Failed Impeachment, the World-wide Pandemic, Coronavirus, Shut Down, George Floyd…or BLACK LIVES MATTER painted in gigantic yellow letters in front of the White House and Trump Tower New York  (Fuck you Donald Trump).

It is clear that this poor little world has not fared well since he has been gone. 

We are not doing well either, here without him.  I know I’m not. I miss his sarcasm, his wit, his political cartoons, his predictable outrage, and the comfort of knowing that this brother of mine…my dependable, safe, witty brother…would always be here.

So what is he doing right now as we try to figure out if it’s safe to leave our houses – ever?  Does he know?  Is he sitting like the Lincoln sand sculpture with his hand on his face, stunned that everything could have gone to ruin so quickly?  Or is he in some incomprehensibly beautiful other reality where none of this matters at all anymore?

I wish he was watching us all and conspiring with old friends to send down some miraculous intervention on our behalf.  Maybe all of our dead relatives are working whatever magic they have to bring us a sense of calm.  Hope?  Peace?

Or maybe they’re just like Tom……

happy they got out of here when they did.

Hallelujah ...... for Tom

When I really want to feel how much it hurts to miss you, I listen to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".  It isn't something I choose to do.  Usually it just happens....shows up somewhere in my daily life....

and brings me to my knees.  Like a blow to the heart that takes your breath away.  And reminds you....

that someone you loved your whole life is forever not here, and that part of your heart will always feel empty.

After ten years, you'd think all of those platitudes about time healing wounds would be true.  But they're not.  I think time just wraps you in the cocoon of daily life and you get used to your limping, sad heart.  

But then a day comes when the song appears, forcing you to feel again.  To grieve and mourn and cry.

When this happens to me, I listen to every version of the song I can find, and sit at my desk and cry.

The song carries me into my broken heart and forces me to look around and remember you, my precious brother, the life we had together, the kinship and soul connection, years of laughter and shared sorrow, joys and songs and phone calls and letters and everything that bonded us, like twins born 18 months apart.  

I want to miss you.  I want to feel the pain.  

And I'm grateful for the poignant and soaring song that gives me that gift, and the man who wrote it.

Here are just some of the versions I've found today....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wllPTTIi1GY

Canadian tenors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR0DKOGco_o

Rufus Wainwright

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwMowPviUAQ

Pentatonix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7xDVKj1ubg

Kyle Tomlinson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL6kHi7OiUY

wedding version

I love you,

           Me

Tom 7-19-18

In the last few weeks of his life, Jeanne and I would have done anything we could to make Tom happy.  I think anyone who knew him would have.

During that time I remember asking him desperately "What can I do for you?"  Jeanne and I had all of the practical things we could do handled.... well, as best we could.  We weren't pros after all, and there were moments when we burst into laughter at the ridiculous idea that the two of us could get a giant guy like him around the house in a wheelchair without banging his knees into the narrow doorways.  

But what I wanted to know was what I could do for him....this brother of mine that I'd loved all my life....when there was nothing anyone could do. 

Without any hesitation whatsoever he looked at me and said...

"Stop being such a doormat"

I should have known he'd go there.   He always told me the truth.  He always looked out for me, even when there was something much more significant going on.

And he was right.  This was the great ultimate most important request he could make of me......something it has taken me these long nine years without him to even begin to do.

Most people who know me would be shocked to think of me that way...... passive, letting anyone walk on me.  Oh no.  I'm the born warrior - fearless and relentless.  It's easy for me.  It's part of my nature.

But Tom didn't grow up with the warrior princess of today.  He knows the less obvious small person who can never say no to someone she loves for fear they'll stop loving her back.

So now, nine years after Tom did the truly rude thing of leaving this earth, I think of that day when he gave me that last most important gift... walking orders to make a huge change in my life.  

It was like him....always looking outward, taking in the bigger picture with the laser focus he had for the details, in life and on the canvas. He was patient, laboriously filling in the tiny backgrounds in his vibrant, expressive paintings,...

     and waiting for his stubborn sister to understand what he was telling her all along.  

 

Brother Love

Eight years....and I know I'm supposed to be writing something meaningful about the passing of time without Tom, and how I feel about it all.

But this year, all I can say is that I still miss him....still sit here with a sad heart....and still wish he could magically return.

Tom gave me this sweet little deer when I was 14.  He was working at Disneyland and stopped at the glass shop on Main Street and got it for me.  For no special reason at all. 

What 16 year old boy buys his sister such a sweet gift?  It was this, and all of the thousands of loving, kind things he did for me my whole life that bonded me to him forever.

I just never thought the unimaginable, unreachable, oh so much too far away 'forever' would start so soon.

So Tom, another year and all of us will be thinking of you especially this week, with gratitude for the Tomness of you, and the honor of being blessed by it as long as we were.

I love you,

Sister P.