Freeform Sunday

Today would have been my brother's birthday. He would have been 34. I miss him. I’m going to take some time today to reflect on him in a few paragraphs. He was a man of few words, so, in his spirit, I’ll try to keep it brief.

I remember the way he looked at me when I would throw rocks at passing trains. I can hear him chide me for some small injustice I’d done to the world, and I can see him stand up for me when my small stature inevitably invited piss missiles to my noggin. I also remember his fists on my shoulders and those small, derisive comments about my hair or eyes or words. I still hear him tell me to fuck off in that sing-song voice that would go right back to wailing “Leto” by Kino; I miss being told to fuck off.

I don’t think our sister or my parents even think of him anymore. Most families wouldn’t understand how broken a relationship would need to become to get to that point, where you pretend your siblings or children never existed. My family got to a point of rupture so severe that my parents probably tell people I’m a ghost. Roman too.

“Life is never a straight line—it’s peaks and valleys. Why would you want to be the same person every day of your life?” —Mary Chapin Carpenter

I heard the quote once, and I knew he’d agree. I try to follow that example. I want to make my future kin proud, but I also want people to see me the way they saw him. Roman knew that he was a different man each day, someone forged in the fire of the previous cauldron and then thrown right back into the next in line.

He would tell me that a man is defined by his actions and that none of us are free of the consequences of either action or inaction. He lived by that. I live by that now: the belief that I will make the man I am tomorrow by doing whatever it is I choose to do today. He went to war to defend that ideal. He didn’t come back.

At my first job out of grad school, I worked in defense technology. I saw people die repeatedly, every day, for hours. I had to write software, and that required looking at that footage through math forever. I quit. It affected me, made me what my brother would call weak; it made me unable to hurt anything again. I cannot take a life, no matter what size or shape or supposed import. I can’t do it.

When war broke out in Ukraine, I was living in San Francisco and working at a tech company. I could have gone back; I didn’t. I don’t regret it because I would have been a liability, but I tried to convince my family to leave, and they wouldn’t.

War today is dark, filled with more pitch-black shadows than ever before. I have the video of his death; it was captured from a drone controlled by another pilot. I’ve watched it. I shouldn’t have watched it. I saw endless hours of death, but nothing could ever punch me in the same way as my first and only viewing of that footage. I’ll never be the same.

I shouldn’t have taken my first job. I shouldn’t have distanced myself emotionally. I shouldn’t have dissociated. I should have known that could be my brother. They were brothers and sisters, just not mine, and I should have known.

I’m going to take some joy away today because that’s what he would have wanted. The joy I’ll take is a lesson he taught me: always be kind, no matter how many times you’re hit or you’ll become your own rival. I won’t be that person, and I’ll always give as much as I can. That’s what grief taught me.

I loved my brother, and he loved borsch and holubtsi and a good kompot. I think I’ll go get some to honor his memory. I’ll post a picture later.

I probably won’t post tomorrow for the regular day. I plan on smoking my yearly cigarette and drinking my bi-yearly four pints of cider. I hope whoever reads this has an amazing day.

Today is hereby Roman Day.