Apologies for not including this in the initial send, but this should have a TW for death. I hope I haven’t caused anyone distress in reading this.
My nephews are such big boys. I mean, they’re physically diminutive at 9 and 11, the spawns of my 4’10 sister. But colossal in ability to smile and give each other dead arms and learn the trumpet and go fishing and cheat at Candyland through the pain of what they’ve seen. And they’ve seen a lot. More than I have and more than I will, of that I am certain.
It was the end of November when I got another one of those dreaded calls that have all but defined my adult years. “Jaxon is such a big boy,” my mom’s voice shook over the phone. I could tell she hated to say that. I could see her shrugging and throwing her bony brown hands up in hopeless submission to a society that insists grieving people focus on the good. Jaxon is such a big boy because he never got to be a little boy, which is just a depressing, banal expression to anyone who doesn’t directly care for children of such circumstances. And just the same, people who endure a lot of grief in short spans are strong because they never had time to be weak. Never had time to really sit and process the loss of one person before another one dropped.
I was on my way to Brooklyn, losing my grip with every unspared detail. Jaxon and Atticus were at Wal-Mart and Starbucks, my mom said, their favorite places. And I shouldn’t bother coming home until Thanksgiving, she said. I shouldn’t turn the car around and rush back to my family for what feels like the billionth time, she said. She always says exactly what she means because she doesn’t know how to live otherwise—a forever waitress, kin of the immigrant coal miner—and so we pressed on toward New York.
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Since the boys’ dad died last January, just four years after they watched their mom, my big sister, die in their home, they’ve been living with my parents. Joy born from tragedy feels dirty if you have any kind of conscience, but they’ve been doing really well. Better than ever, actually. Which isn’t to say losing both parents before you lose all your baby teeth is a good thing, but, you know, joy is joy. I was raised to take what you can get in this life. They’ll be raised the same.
Indeed, you read that right: they watched their mom die. The tumor in my sister’s lung got loose and she choked to death on her own blood, and they watched at the uncontaminated ages of six and four. I watch that scene play out in my head daily, five years later, imagining some alternate ending where I save her life and she is still here. I can’t imagine having a firsthand account. To have seen the person you love most in this world, who loves you most in this world, who birthed you, read to you, and chased you through sprinklers disappear right before your baby eyes. What a total cosmic injustice.
Since moving in with my parents, the boys go to their grandmother’s every Friday. Everyone looks forward to it, including my parents who usually go down to the Moose Lodge for cheap wine and seafood boils, decompressing from another week with little kids. And that Friday, the night before my mom called and Brooklyn and all that, while I was at some friendsgiving, watching to see if people liked my mac & cheese, my nephews watched their grandmother die. They watched blood come out of her mouth and they called 911 and they ran out of the house coatless and shoeless and she was pronounced dead on the scene. There would be no funeral.
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Somewhere along the border of Bushwick and Bed-Stuy, I told Andrew that I wouldn’t tell anyone what was happening in my life. I didn’t really know these girls, and the last thing I wanted was to be the new friend who turns out to be a buzzkill. I mean, I think most would agree that said friend should have turned the car around and rushed back to their family, but when half your life has come to a grinding halt because someone died, you might just want to indulge the escapist part of your brain. Just this once.
Heavy is the burden of privately unraveling on a Brooklyn dance floor. I evanesced into the condensation on the glass of my never-ending margarita. Flipped through the tattoo artist’s flash sheets a hundred times, feeling blank enough to actually get a tattoo in a nightclub. Anything to distract from this sick reality where I have no control over what happens to the people I love. I was still ordering drinks at 4 AM, vogueing with glittery men on roller skates, containing myself in fractured light. New friends. Act normal. I kept hearing my mom’s sobering voice: Jaxon is such a big boy.
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Grief adds a layer to aging that most won’t excavate. Probably because that’d suggest, by supreme moral law, that they give you grace. And the narratives people will construct to get out of giving you grace! So gratuitously elaborate! It’s like, just go ahead and say you don’t think people should be permanently altered by death. Go ahead and say you think we should grow up and get over it. I mean, I, for one, thought I’d feel older than I do at the big age of 32. But death has made a child of me. I cry all the fucking time; it takes next to nothing. I am raw and anxious and frequently remote while intimating otherwise. I act out. I screw up. But then I look at my nephews, such big boys, and I want to be better. Bigger. Shit, I want to act my age.
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After Brooklyn it was Thanksgiving. And after Thanksgiving, we brought Jaxon and Atticus to Philly. Childhood is amazing in that you haven’t yet learned to dilute how much you love something. After each activity, they raved on and on about how awesome it was. No real details, just the sheer awesomeness of it. Boba and ramen and buskers and pigeons. Pigeons! I felt like the world’s best aunt.
All weekend, I kept looking for signs. Signs that, beyond the obvious Pokémon and sugar highs, my big boys were still little boys. I’d catch Atticus staring off solemnly, and I couldn’t tell if he was overwhelmed by the city, or reliving that night at his grandmother’s, so recent. Too recent. I didn’t ask. I didn’t bring it up once. I didn’t want to be the reason they thought about it. I hoped to be a respite. I think it worked, but what do I know? I’m the one telling a story that’s not even mine to tell.
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“I’m so scared they’re desensitized at this point,” my mom said. I assuaged her despite the uncomfortable truth that I’ve never seen my nephews cry over death. They rarely bring up their parents. And I don’t want to see them sad, but I want to see them sad. I want them to know they are still big boys—bigger, even—if they cry themselves to sleep, or need a really big hug when it hurts. When everyone’s parents are at the chorus concert and they’ve got a mam and pap instead.
But maybe that’s just my selfish need to know that they’re still little boys. My little boys. I texted Jaxon, “you know Uncle Andy and I are always here for you,” to which he replied, “I know. Gotta go, mammy’s wrapping Christmas presents and says I have to go to bed.”
“But death has made a child of me.” I had to pause. I haven’t been able to describe this feeling but it’s exactly this. I have to take on the role of the eldest daughter, but all I want is to go back to being a child. I’m hyper responsible but my room’s always a mess and I procrastinate the important things. Thank you so much for writing this and I’m so sorry for your losses 🤍
I don’t even have the words. I listened to this as Myles played with his blocks and just felt immense grief and gratitude. I wish boys never had to be big boys. Thank you for sharing this with us.