I don't visit my brother's grave. Not because I didn't love my brother, or even because cemeteries spook me, but because it breaks my heart to see the shiny marble headstone that doesn't have my name on it. It took twenty years for my parents to work up the courage to have a proper marker made for him, and the day we had the memorial service to unveil it I remember walking over and staring for about five minutes at the beautifully carved gray and black memorial that bore my parents' and older brother's names, but no mention of the sister who, although young at his time of death, has missed him every single day of her life.
My family are not cruel people, and to say anything about it would hurt them. I can't do that. But neither can I work up the nerve to visit him and see that hated stone staring accusingly at me. So I went to the owner of a private park where Michael and I used to walk when I was a toddler, and I obtained his permission to build a memorial of my own. I visit it often.
I don't bring him flowers. Most eighteen-year-old boys don't like flowers much when they're alive, and it seems kind of disrespectful to force them on him now just because he's dead. Sometimes I bring music for him; insane 120-beat-per-minute acid house junk that he likes and that hurts my ears, but lets me feel close to him. But most of the time I take him baked goods. Instead of a marble headstone I used a large boulder, big enough to sit on, in which I carved his name and dates of birth and death, and in front of it I build brownie mausoleums, pyramids of chocolate chip or peanut butter or almond or lemon-zest cookies, little inukshuk of banana bread and date-walnut loaf to welcome visitors and point the way to the great log cabin in the sky, the way their stone counterparts do up North. On special occasions I make applesauce squares. I wasn't old enough to bake when Michael died, but if he'd lived he would have loved my applesauce squares. Everyone does.
Michael was a teenager in the late seventies and early eighties, the age of individuality, where every teenager's wish was to stand out from the crowd. In life he did this by bleaching his hair and wearing black leather and eyeliner. So what I've done seems fitting. Because I have faith that wherever his essence may reside, he's happy and smug in the assurance that he's probably the only person in the world whose memorials come chocolate-coated.
My family are not cruel people, and to say anything about it would hurt them. I can't do that. But neither can I work up the nerve to visit him and see that hated stone staring accusingly at me. So I went to the owner of a private park where Michael and I used to walk when I was a toddler, and I obtained his permission to build a memorial of my own. I visit it often.
I don't bring him flowers. Most eighteen-year-old boys don't like flowers much when they're alive, and it seems kind of disrespectful to force them on him now just because he's dead. Sometimes I bring music for him; insane 120-beat-per-minute acid house junk that he likes and that hurts my ears, but lets me feel close to him. But most of the time I take him baked goods. Instead of a marble headstone I used a large boulder, big enough to sit on, in which I carved his name and dates of birth and death, and in front of it I build brownie mausoleums, pyramids of chocolate chip or peanut butter or almond or lemon-zest cookies, little inukshuk of banana bread and date-walnut loaf to welcome visitors and point the way to the great log cabin in the sky, the way their stone counterparts do up North. On special occasions I make applesauce squares. I wasn't old enough to bake when Michael died, but if he'd lived he would have loved my applesauce squares. Everyone does.
Michael was a teenager in the late seventies and early eighties, the age of individuality, where every teenager's wish was to stand out from the crowd. In life he did this by bleaching his hair and wearing black leather and eyeliner. So what I've done seems fitting. Because I have faith that wherever his essence may reside, he's happy and smug in the assurance that he's probably the only person in the world whose memorials come chocolate-coated.
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