Spring

My uncle disappeared on March 5, 2002. He had stormed out of his parents house following a heated confrontation with my grandfather which had almost become physical. He took a vacuum hose from the garage, tossed it onto the passenger seat, and drove off. He probably only had to drive 15 minutes to an isolated spot on a backroad overlooking the Lockwood Folly River. There, he placed pictures of his children on the floorboard. He ran the vacuum hose from the exhaust into the driver's side window and sealed up the openings. He turned the ignition and waited. He wasn't found until two weeks later. 

I haven't thought about the specific details in a long time. My hand is shaking just a little bit as I write this into my phone. This was all 22 years ago. My uncle's two children, Daniel and Hannah, were very young at the time. Daniel died a few days after Christmas 2003 of an infection from a lost tooth. Hannah has her own family now. My Aunt Sherri, my uncle was separated from her at the time, I think, remains a quiet but haunted woman. Still, she's remarried and seems happy enough.

When I think of spring, I think of my uncle. As the years have passed, March has become particularly full of memories of suicide, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation. These anniversaries aren't always observed by my consciousness but my body certainly feels them. I notice this more this year as I work to overcome my lifelong denial of my own emotions. I don't think I'll ever be an open book but I can at least see myself being willing to read a few select pages aloud, at least to certain people.

None of this really connects in the way that good writing should. These paragraphs are disconnected. But spring, beautiful as it can be in North Carolina, carries a darkness and a foreshadowing. In some memories I'm more passive than active, working to embody stability and normalcy. In other memories, I'm the catalyst and carrier of suffering. 

I joked with my wife recently that if one lives long enough, every day of the calendar becomes a potential trigger. The year is littered with land mines and forgotten hazards. How do you navigate that? Certainly, you don't navigate it alone. You don't walk through it without someone to keep watch by your side.

No one on this planet chose to be born. No one was given a chance to opt out. Certainly, no one was given control over the circumstances into which they were born: yet we are expected to be grateful for the opportunity. A mere 70 years followed by a return to nothing. It would be easy to convince ourselves that none of it "matters." To the indifferent universe? No, I suppose it doesn't. But, as José Saramago wrote:

"The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much talked of immortality."

18 Februaries

February is a strange word. I've always tried to pronounce it just how it looks: Feberrary. Now put it in plural: Februaries. Time to look at Etymonline:

February was the last month of the ancient Roman calendar (pre-450 B.C.E.) and was named for the Roman feasts of purification, which were held on the ides (13th) of the month. The word itself comes from the "Latin februarius mensis "month of purification," from februare "to purify," from februa "purifications, expiatory rites" (plural of februum "means of purification, expiatory offerings")."

February is the month of my father's birthday and my brother's birthday. Both of them are, like me, Aquarius -- but that's where the similarities end. 

It's also the month in which, long ago in 2007, I got married. I was 22. I was very young. Looking back now it's hard to believe I was ever that young or that brave. I took no notice of the advice or worries of anyone else as my fiancée and I planned on taking care of the formalities at the courthouse in downtown Charlotte -- the city where I was born. I don't regret the decision to get married or any of the other decisions that accompanied it.

But our first February was in 2006. Eighteen years ago. There's a photo of us on Valentine's Day. I must have set up my digital camera (flash turned on) somewhere in the kitchen of the small apartment I shared with another guy. My future wife and I are standing in the "living room." I'm wearing a brown leather jacket and looking down at her, my hands framing her face (or at least that's how I remember it). Her hair is permed, she's white as ever but especially so with the glare of the flash. My hair is curly and chaotic and I'm a bit overweight. She's as much a nixie as ever. 

By that same day a year later, my hair was close cropped and I'd lost some weight. I'll never forget, two days later on the day we got married, just how stunned I was when I saw her for the first time in the dress she'd be wearing. It was like meeting someone all over again. 

Her dad had to help me with my necktie because I didn't yet know how to tie one. His world is now completely different, too. So many things are. Of course, my son wouldn't be born for another four years and then some. 

Februaries have sped past. The bizarre confluence of cold and warm weather, bronchitis, allergies, and the last depths of winter. Valentine's Day and our anniversary melt into one another, forming a sort of bridge between themselves. It's an uncanny month: neither spring nor winter. I've run two marathons in February, our son was diagnosed with autism during February and my wife with kidney disease. I spent hours and hours in the cold at the Greyhound Station during February. 

But I've also come back to February again and again, to the 16th. To her.