May 15, 2022 will mark twenty years since my brother died in an auto-pedestrian accident. Two decades. A life that seems like yesterday, a lifetime ago, and sometimes, one that seems like it never happened at all. An event that created a distinct “before and after” in my family’s life and shaped us into the people we are today.
May 15, 2022 is also my sister’s due date. A 1 in 365 chance. While I know it’s just a due date and the baby will come on her own time, I still can’t believe of all the days in a year, it’s that one. It feels like a beautiful story of redemption and yet so unfair at the same time. Of all the joyful things that grief can overshadow, I don’t want it to be this one. I know it won’t regardless, because there are few things better than fresh baby snuggles, but it’s a lot of emotions to manage at once. This morning I wrapped up my last long run before my half marathon next weekend. I took the turn into my park loop, where I run around Maplewood Lake, and unexpectedly started sobbing when I saw the incredible sunrise. It was the kind of cry where you are bent over and the emotional pain of missing becomes physical. How could there be moments like this 20 years later when there are days I’m not even sure I consciously think about the fact I used to have an older brother? These moments whiplash me into the 11-year-old version of myself the quickest. They remind me of times I would ride my bike (or later when I could, drive) to the cemetery and sob. The place I went often enough and told no one. That grass has been watered with tears when I wasn’t sure who to talk to or how to cope. A place I went to after the death of childhood best friend and a grandparent, a miscarriage, and martial hardships. But today, I remembered all the normals days I have gone there too. Times when I would look around first to make sure no one else was there before getting on my knees and putting my hands on the ground or touching my brothers headstone and letting it out. Times were my grief was oddly mixed with shame and it felt embarrassing to cry that hard. I felt that this morning too. I shouldn’t be surprised by this morning. I’ve been feeling “it” for weeks. My body knows, it remembers, and I’m not the only one in my family experiencing this. The feeling of spring, of everything coming to life and then a sudden death. Driving past packed little league fields and remembering May 14, 2002 when I walked down to Grandville Little League to tell my coach I wouldn’t be at practice later because my brother was in the hospital, completely naive to how serious the situation was. Then a few days later having my brothers team and every team he would have played against come to Cook Funeral Home in uniform to give my parents a baseball. Hearing track meets at the school behind our house and remembering the morning my brother died, wanting to tell him he did a good job at his meet the night before but then not saying anything. Hundreds of little reminders, or regrets that feelings of fault that have been processed with different therapists throughout the years. Also, before the park loop, I was listening to a podcast with Brene Brown where she talks about having to unlearn the post-childhood trauma survival skills of hyper-vigilance, anticipating and planning for the worst, and making sure everyone else is ok. Those skills got me through childhood and my young adulthood. I did not know a single other 11 year old who experienced a sibling death. I was paving my own way. Brene talks about her unmatched ability to dig deep when needed and how it’s causing her to take dirt and excavate areas that don’t belong to her as an adult and I resonated with her words so much. Honestly, my ability to dig deep, to forge through, is something I take pride in a majority of the time. I will not quit. I will get it done no matter the cost. And I will do it well. I’m just starting to realize that “no matter the cost” does actually come with a cost. It takes from people I love the most and it’s time to unlearn some things and relearn others. It’s time to learn how to be softer. To enjoy spring in my heart without preparing for winter. Two decades of missing. The days were it feels terribly unfair and beyond painful are rare, but when they come, wow it’s hard to figure out how we’ve survived this long. But here we are, through survival mode, most days, I consider my brother’s death the most tender, brutal, and somehow beautiful thing we’ve ever had to do as a family. None of us would choose it if we had to but I’m glad we are in this place. Nicholas Scott Stegeman, life is not forever but love is and I’m thankful for that love and the promise of eternal life. You are missed and remembered.
1 Comment
Mia
6/19/2022 09:12:35 pm
I’m sobbing as I read your journey. I’ve met Nick he was a great kid, full of energy n life. First time I met him he had a baseball mitt n was wearing a baseball hat.
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Hi! I'm Haley. Archives
May 2019
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