”Kevin”
Whether it’s my watch’s silent buzz or the sun coming through my bedroom windows, I always wake up with the same routine. I say their names. Kevin’s name is always first. Shortly after his death, I was reading something that said a person never dies until the day their name is not spoken. So every morning, without fail, I say his name. The older I get the longer my list of names has gotten.
This morning I say his name on what would have been his 40th birthday.
You, my reader, might not have known Kevin, but I’m sure everyone reading knows a little or a lot about grief.
Kevin died when he was 16. I was 17 and a senior in high school. He was my cousin that grew up just a short golf cart ride from my house. He was my best friend. He was my brother–not in the biological sense–but in my heart. We loved each other like siblings. We fought. There was hardly a game we played either basketball or video game that didn’t end up with us rolling around punching each other. We loved. I’ll never forget him getting out of class in high school to come to see me in my independent study yearbook class. My dog had come home out of the woods sick that morning. I knew he wouldn’t make it until I got home. He came to hug me and tell me he would bury him when he got home. He risked getting into trouble (he was supposed to be in the bathroom) to comfort me. Knowing me, being the ultimate rule follower, I doubt I would have done the same.
I, too, am 40. At 40, I realize at the age of 17 I left my heart wide open and vulnerable. If you don’t know already, a wide-open and vulnerable heart hurts when the ills of earthly life get ahold of it. The word “heartache” doesn’t really even begin to describe it. But, I write this today to provide a glimmer of hope.
The last place I laid my eyes on Kevin before his accident was in the upstairs hallway of our high school. He was coming down the hall headed to his next class. At the bottom of those four stairs–just two doors down from where I now teach the future of America–the exact place where we exchanged a few words about his upcoming home tennis match and my away softball game–is right outside the office of the 6th-grade guidance counselor and my best friend. My best friend from college celebrates her birthday today as well, March 19th. Coincidence? I think not.
I see Kevin in so many people–my best friends, my family, my students. I see him everywhere, even in my dreams. Yes, I see him in my dreams. We talk and laugh in some of the most random of places. His hair is still coarse and parted the same way, the timbre of his voice is the same, his lopsided; kind of cocky smile is the same. The only thing that’s different is he has a beard. I know, right? Weird! I know how dreams work. Dreams are just our brain’s file cabinet that when we sleep those files shift in an attempt to get organized. Maybe these dreams are just manifestations of all the what-ifs I’ve said over the years. Maybe they are just coincidences. Again, I think not.
Ok. I know. I promised hope.
Grief is such a thief, but it is also such a great teacher. If I’ve learned anything over the years that he has been gone it’s that grief is simply a measure of how much we love. Grief, for years, made me ask, “What if?” What if he had not died: Would we live side by side on A.B. Jacks Road? Would he be married or have children? Would our children have fought and loved each other as much as we did? Grief makes us ask such silly things. I think I’ve discovered the question that we grieving souls should ask–it’s not what if, but what now?
Kevin wasn’t a boy of few words. He quite often let his opinions and voice be heard–loudly and clearly. If I were to ask him today, “Kevin, what now?” I know what he would say. It wouldn’t take a lot of words. It would only take one. He would say, “Live.”
Live.
Live.
Live for you, not me.
Live and plant dreams where wounds have left all of those jagged scars.
Live, learn new things, and see new things.
Live–and when life knocks you down–get back up and live some more.
Live and love even if you lose.
Live and laugh a lot!!
I swear I can hear Kevin right now, “Live, Kate, just live.”
We who grieve need to choose to live while we grieve–not just grieve for grieving’s sake. We need a shift in perspective. I need to think not of the 24 years I’ve lost, but the 16 I gained. In the mornings, my recitation of names need not be a litany of the people I’ve lost but the memories of those people I still have.
Happy 40th birthday, Kevin. I know you will celebrate, as you probably do every day in heaven, with some of the same names I call after yours every morning. I can’t wait until I get to celebrate with you, but until then, I’m going to live.
Chronicles of a Mini Pearl 