Note from Jenny: Sam's sister Sarah sent me this to post for Sam's birthday week. Please join us in celebrating by checking out the #32forSam page!
This year has been adjusting to the realities of losing Sam. Last year’s Christmas was in Seattle with my sister stationed out of an obscure Airbnb. Kate was staying elsewhere as she had a small trace of a cold and my brother feared of any possibility of infection. This exacerbated well-worn sibling dynamics between Kate and my brother. Resultantly, Kate, Mom, and I spent most of that trip lingering over cups of coffee at a café in an adjacent neighborhood that served Swedish pancakes and blueberry french toast. Since Sam’s first diagnosis, he took risks that blossomed into a beautiful and meaningful life. He was driven by his work and Alaska adventures. He loved Jenny, Birkie, his parents, and his grandparents. He had a special place in his heart for Grandpa Sharky. They were besties from the very beginning. Sam idled his youth on Grandpa Giles’ fishing boat until, as Grandpa pointed out, Sam found girls. Presumably this was sometime in early high school. I recognized right away that everyone in Sam’s world experienced Sam’s death differently. His death blew apart Jenny’s life. It hit my parents like a hurricane that required extracting a life that once was and rebuilding from the pieces that were left. For my sister and I, we were hit like shrapnel from a proximal storm. It didn’t affect our daily lives in the way it did for Jenny, my parents, and Sam’s closest friends and co-workers. I’ve felt this year like the wound from his death has been festering deep inside of me, too deep from the surface to feel but I know it’s there. It’s as if I knew there was growing infection inside me and I wanted the pain to rise to the surface so I could feel the feels appropriate to the magnitude of the loss. This week the needle I needed to hit the hurt nabbed it just enough to catch the spot and all the feels flooded to the surface. It was a small comment, a friend remarked that she didn’t talk to her family too terribly much. She said, “Take my brother, for instance, I only talk to him two or three times a year.” Boom, there it was, the needle. This comment hit me directly in the hurt for two reasons. The first reason is that I too only talked to Sam a few times a year. Sam was fully engaged in his life. Even though I didn’t talk to him often, I always knew what he was up to and I always found a strong sense of pride and shared identity in how he pursued his passions and made a difference in the world through his work. The second reason it hit me hard was because I couldn’t make those calls anymore and will never be able to again. The needle point puncture of festering infection felt cathartic. Finally, the weight of my emotion mirrored the magnitude of the loss. Sam’s birthday is a week on Monday. He would have been 32. Since the phone comment, I have been a leaky faucet of emotion missing him. My mom says it comes and waves. There will be a little comment or memory and it hits. Christmas was hard not for the obvious reasons but because when my sister walked into my parent’s place in Florida, Sam’s clothes, shoes, and fishing lures were in the closet and the desk awaiting his return. It was a ghost of healthy Sam. The last time Sam was there, he was living a vibrant, healthy life. No one had any indication his disease would return and unfold like it did. Today I am on a plane heading for Mexico. I am doing a weeklong sailing seminar with NOLS that ends on his birthday. When Sam died, I asked Jenny for a jacket of Sam’s that I could take on my travels. It is packed in my little duffel awaiting a new adventure. It is a physical representation of how I take him with me wherever I go and how his spirit is still alive and moving forward in me, as it is in its unique ways in all the people he touched. I miss his spirit and his tenacity. I miss the silly sibling dynamics that used to drive my sister batty. I miss not being able to make those calls 3-4 times a year. I miss his passion for work, love, and life. I carry these things with me, stronger and with more conviction that ever before. I miss you, Sam. I am so proud of the life you lived and I carry you with me wherever I go. Happy 32nd birthday. I love you, Sare Comments are closed.
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