The Between

My brother's 50th birthday was celebrated on August 21st, 2017. His birthday is actually on August 12th, but birthdays are never convenient, so they are celebrated whenever it makes sense and when you can fit in an awesome pool party! Miss Sally and I took the kids to Toledo and we drank and swam and had a great time until we had to leave, because we are responsible adults and knew that the party was only going to get more outrageous. So we went home.

Steve died 27 days later on September 17th, 2017.

No one wants to remember the day someone died. You celebrate the birthday. And you lie to yourself that the anniversary of their death doesn't mean anything and that you'll almost forget.

But I've got this weird thing where I cannot stop thinking about the time between when I last saw him and when he died. The Between. I feel like this is an episode of Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone and I am watching his last 27 days and unable to change the outcome. I only know what he did those 27 days through what people are now posting on Facebook and saying, "I can't believe this concert we went to with Steve was just last year," and the inevitable, "This was Steve's last Rocket's game." I'd like like to think I could slip in between one of those moments and do something that would change the future. But I can't. And I find myself dwelling here in The Between.

I'm sure that many people have Betweens with their loved ones' deaths. Like if it was flipped, with his passing first and his birthday second, we'd be thinking about the time leading up to the birthday he wasn't able to celebrate. Or if someone dies around a major holiday. Those days Between are much shorter than waiting a whole year to celebrate the birthday or trying not remember the death.

I'm not counting down the days. It is possible I will wake up on the 17th and not immediately remember. But at some point, The Between will end, and I will remember it is the day I didn't want to make special by remembering. And I will put on my brave face. And I will graciously thank the people that remember, because I am thankful that they do. And I'll look back on those 27 days and realize that there was nothing I could do then and nothing I can do now.

Personally, I don't think Steve would be at all happy that I'm feeling like a miserable lump of sadness pudding. I guess I am in my own Between. And I look back and see my own 27 days ago when I was blissfully happy and look ahead to when I can deal with Steve's passing and be at peace. I've been up and down. I think I've got a handle on it... I think that it is all behind me... and then I am a mess. I look up and I am still in my own Between. And I'm waiting to be on the other side of that Between.

Weed Tea

Many years ago, when I was about 10, my brother and I decided to smoke the dried, tubular, hollowed out weeds that grew near the creek in our back yard. We’d pluck a nice fat one and break it down to a cigar sized length. Then we would light blue tip matches off of the dry rocks and attempt to fire up the hollow weeds. The weed really didn’t light and we would end up inhaling more blue tip match sulfur than smoke.

My brother got the completely logical idea that we should use the hollow weeds as a medium to smoke something else out of. Sort of a hard cased cigarette. Since we did not have any tobacco in the house or in the seven miles radius of desolation and country farms that we called home, we opted for the next best thing: tea.

We went in the house, opened up four Lipton tea bags and dumped the contents into a plastic sandwich bag. We disposed of the external tea bag material, string and paper by stuffing it way in the bottom of the trash can because we were sure mom or dad would figure out what we were up to if they found the remnants.

In the back yard we stuffed the hollow reeds with some of the tea. We used smaller weeds to pack the tea in cannon ball style. We fired them up. He coughed. I choked. He wheezed. My eyes dripped tears. It was smooth.

When we finished (fifteen seconds after we started) we went back inside and most likely played Atari. He probably won and punched me in the arm because that's how it always was.

Three years later I was in the living room (probably playing Atari) when my mother called to me from the kitchen. I entered. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table. Mom was standing. Between them at the table was a plastic sandwich bag filled with three year old tea.

Mom did the talking. “Is this yours?”

My mind raced back. I ended up tossing that plastic bag of tea in my underwear drawer, way in the back. I’d see it every so often, but didn’t think much of it as it was only tea. I never threw it away. Mom had been going through my drawers, diligently looking for weed, and low and behold she hit the mother lode.

I answered her question, “Yes. It’s tea.”

“Is this marijuana?”

“No! It’s tea!”

My parents wouldn’t know tea from weed so I was in for a bit of trouble.

“You have one more chance… is this marijuana?”

“No! It’s tea! Steve and I tried to smoke it years ago!”

Dad finally spoke up, “You smoked tea?”

“Yes. Out of the weeds by the creek.”

“The hollow ones?” Dad didn’t drop his apples very far from the tree.

Mom couldn’t believe that her snooping was proving fruitless. “There’s only one way we can tell that this is tea.”

Dad put a pan of water on the stove. I was made to sit at the table and wait forever watching for the water to boil. He dumped in the contents of the bag. We all waited more. I distinctly remember Dad wafting the steam to his face and saying, “Well, it smells like tea.”

That was all the proof they needed. The weed tea was disposed of. I was given some sort of punishment that involved not being allowed to play Atari.

My recollection of this story sounds brave, but I’m sure I was whimpering and high pitched stammering and I bet I ratted out my brother in the first ten seconds of the interrogation. When he came home that night, he got three years of backlogged reprimands. His punishment was probably worse because it always was.