Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful

by Stephanie Wittels Wachs

  Why didn’t I say something?

  The last video I sent him was the one of Iris walking for the first time. It was two days before he died. When I recovered his phone from the coroner’s office, I saw a picture of Iris on his lock screen.

  39

  Eleven Months, Three Weeks, Six Days

  A few days before the anniversary of your death, I wake up with the realization that I need to buy a yahrzeit candle. In Judaism, it’s the memorial candle that’s lit every year on the anniversary of a loved one’s death. I search Amazon and read reviews. I can’t fathom having the time or energy to write a review on anything, but reviewing a yahrzeit candle feels especially odd. Nevertheless, I read them. People seem to favor one that comes in a blue tin because it’s cheaper. Jews. I think about that one joke you always used to tell about Jews. You’d come out onstage and confidently exclaim in this sort of sing-songy voice, “Jews love money!” Then you’d hold for a beat and say, “I can say that because…I hate Jews.”

  I buy a six-pack (of candles) as well as an electric one that you plug into an outlet. I don’t know why I would need both, but I want to be prepared.

  I feel nauseous again. I breathe deeply to calm the sick inside my body. I’m having what feels like an extended, slow-motion panic attack over several days. Is this a thing? I try to pack my lunch but feel queasy looking in the fridge at all the food. I sit on the couch and put my feet up. I close my eyes. Iris is dancing around the room in her polka-dot rain boots, holding her mermaid doll. Mike is in the background asking if I want an ice pack. I respond to neither.

  I look up at the bookshelves. On the top shelf is this 11-inch by 17-inch poster that’s mounted on foam board. It’s a blown-up Apples to Apples playing card that reads Harris Wittels: 1984–American actor, comedian, writer, and musician. Known for authoring Humblebrag: The Art of False Modesty; Also possesses a deep, unwavering affection for Phish. No death date was listed. You used to love playing Apples to Apples. I wonder when this was made and why. I wonder so much about the origins of all your shit. Two shelves over is the framed photo of you in your Maui baseball cap that’s now also on your headstone. Also on the top shelf is an 8-inch by 10-inch painting on canvas by a fan of your character Harris, the animal control guy, from Parks and Rec. Four shelves down is a black-and-white Wittels family photo that we took at Ganny’s eighty-ninth birthday party, where you’re awkwardly touching my shoulder and Mom and I are mid-cackle. Next to that is a small photo of us standing back-to-back, arms crossed like Milli Vanilli or some other group in a late 1980s music video. I’m seventeen; you’re fourteen. We took it in our backyard for Mother’s Day one year. My hair is dyed fire-engine red because I was in The Miss Firecracker Contest at the time. This little, gold-framed photo of us sat on the bookshelf in the living room at your house in LA, and now it sits here with the rest of your displaced shit.

  I sit on the couch and absorb all of the you that’s in front of me. It’s pushing a lot of buttons. I finally take a good, deep breath, and the tears pour out. I try to muffle them, so Iris doesn’t get upset, but I can’t. Mike comes behind me and hugs my neck. Iris comes over and lays her head on my legs, looks in my eyes and grins. She gives me a pat-pat-pat.

  I say, “Remember what I told you about when your friends are sad? What do you say when your friend is sad?”

  She says, “You need hug?”

  I say, “Yes, baby, I need hug.” And she does.

  I keep saying it, but it’s true again and again: it’s hard to wallow in misery when this creature is staring back at me. This is why I kept sending you videos and photos of her and why you kept asking for videos and photos of her. She is the best medicine. I feel less nauseous after staring into my daughter’s eyes and finally breathing into the place that hurts, and I’m able to move on with my day. I do have one more hysterical, explosive, crying fit once I get to work, which hasn’t happened in a while, but it is what it is. I’m dreading the end of this week. We all are.

  Later that evening, Iris’s speech therapist sends us an email with the results of the speech evaluation we did earlier that week. It was the first time Iris actually performed the test herself. On previous occasions, Mike and I would answer a bunch of questions and the therapist would use them to score her progress. According to the report, Iris scored higher than 90 percent of kids her age. At two years old, she is “performing similarly to a three-year-old,” which means she’s on a three-year-old level of a child with typical hearing.

  I think back to all those initial questions that plagued me when she was first born:

  Will her voice be affected? No.

  Can she hear birds chirping with hearing aids? Whispering? Yes.

  Concerts, music classes, dance classes, movie theaters, airplanes? She does it all.

  Can she hear us if we call for her from the other room? Yes.

  Do we have to be looking at her when we talk? No. She has supersonic hearing.

  Daycare with hearing kids or special school? She’s in daycare with all hearing kids.

  Mainstream education? Yep, headed that direction.

  What can she hear now? Everything. She can hear everything. Calm the fuck down.

  I think about how devastated I was when you came home a few weeks after she was born, how you said it was the most depressed you’d ever seen me. I think about how worried I was about her future—that she would fall behind, that she would suffer, that all of it would be so hard. I think about how you told me to stop “future-tripping,” that Iris would be just fine—better than fine. She was just a chill baby. I was the one who was fucked-up about it. Not her. I want to go back in time and talk to myself and tell that terrified new mom that everything is going to be okay. I want to tell her, “Your child is a wonder. That’s all you need to know.”

  I celebrate my child’s success, and I yearn to share it with you.

  • • •

  I often wonder when all of this will end, but there is no end to grief. There’s only navigating the way to a new normal. The old normal consisted of us being a family of four, then a family of five, then a family of six. In the old normal, we texted each other constantly about Iris, about girls, about television shows. We told each other secrets and compared notes on Mom and Dad. In the old normal, we constantly worried about whether you were sober, using, alive or dead, and you constantly reassured us that you had it under control.

  On February 19, 2015, you died of a drug overdose. You were thirty years old. You were talented. You were successful. You were loved.

  Time is now measured before and after that day.

  I remember thinking at the time that I would never feel joy again. I was wrong. I often smile without guilt or hesitation. I play hide and seek. I make small talk, paint portraits, sing songs, buy groceries and cook things with them. I co-parent a flock of baby dolls and pick fresh strawberries with my toddler. I’ve shared a bottle of wine with friends. I directed a couple of plays. I survived being stranded outside of a gas station ’til 4:00 a.m. after a flash flood. I worked to get a bill passed in the Texas Legislature that didn’t pass because Texas is the worst, but the point is, I tried.

  Sometimes we even eat pizza and dance in the living room to reggae music and Annie Lennox. I never expected to dance in the living room again. I still post too many pictures of Iris on the internet, but my God, she is just the funniest little person. She makes me laugh a hundred times a day, a thousand times a week, a million times a month. And what better way to honor you than to laugh? So, I’m going to continue doing that. And as time passes—as it inevitably does—the good days will outnumber the bad.

  Now I find you in places I never looked before. Like today, I saw multiple clouds in the sky shaped like fish and knew it was you. Or yesterday, when a white feather blew across the floor of my office, and I picked it up gingerly and laid it on the bookshelf over my desk. Or a month ago, when this gnarl
y possum crossed our fence in the backyard three days in a row at 5:45 p.m. like he was coming home from a long day at the office and Mom proclaimed it was “the spirit of Harris.”

  Your absence will always be palpable but so will your spirit, your presence, your memory.

  This is the new normal.

  40

  One Year

  He’s dead.

  He died.

  Your brother died.

  He is dead.

  A year has passed.

  It feels like yesterday and a hundred years ago all at the same time.

  I leave work early to beat rush-hour traffic, and Mike drives us to the cemetery. We bring flowers. We tidy up the area. I brush off all the ants that are crawling on the headstone and all over the Friday Night Lights box set. I prop up all the little toy soldiers. I fall to my knees. I show you a few videos of Iris. I tell you how much I miss you. I tell you how much I hate you. I tell you how much I love you. It’s hard to walk away. It’s hard to know what to say. Every time I come here, I don’t know what to say. Every time I come here, I have trouble walking away.

  After the cemetery, we pick up Iris from preschool, and I breathe her in like she’s an oxygen mask on a plummeting airplane. The babysitter arrives at 5:30 p.m., and Mike and I head back out to meet Dad at the synagogue. Mom won’t be joining us for the service because she opted for a weekend trip to New Orleans with her best friend, Kay. I don’t blame her. Everyone has to grieve in her own way. I wouldn’t want to be here for my kid’s Yahrzeit either.

  Even though we’re here for the shittiest of reasons, the service is notably upbeat, featuring a mini jam-band. There are bongos and a tambourine. You’d like it. I lean over to Mike at some point and tell him we should bring Iris. Like you, she goes bonkers over live music.

  At the end of the service, the rabbi reads a list of congregants who died this week. I think about how ripped apart I was last year when we sat in this service. I think about the families who are sitting here today, how ripped apart they must be. Then he reads the list of congregants who died this week in years past. The list is exceptionally long and alphabetical, so we have lots of time until we get to the W’s. When your name finally comes out of his mouth, I spill tears, lots of tears. It’s hard to catch my breath. I cry through the Kaddish. I’m unable to say it. I look up at the ceiling and wonder if you’re looking down.

  • • •

  I think about the day a person dies, how the morning is just a morning, a meal is just a meal, a song is just a song. It’s not the last morning, or the last meal, or the last song. It’s all very ordinary, and then it’s all very over.

  The space between life and death is a moment.

  Last February 19 was an ordinary day. I took some photos of my baby flipping through a thick book called Lost Beauties of the English Language. I made coffee, drove to work, taught my students, ate some lunch. I noted the beautiful day. I met my family at speech therapy. After my daughter’s session, I changed her diaper like I’d done a thousand times before.

  All the while, you lay lifeless on a rug a thousand miles away, and I had no idea. Until I got the call, I had no idea. In one moment you were alive, and in the next, you weren’t. That fast. In one moment I was myself, and in the next, I wasn’t.

  Because a huge part of my identity is being your sister.

  And while it was over for you in a moment (at least I hope it was that fast), it will remain alive in me for hundreds of thousands of future moments. I am forever changed by something that happened to you in a moment.

  The Greeks called it a peripeteia: a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances. A point of no return.

  I wonder what led up to your point of no return.

  I wonder about the first thing you thought when you opened your eyes that morning.

  I wonder what you ate for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. I hope one of them was Chili’s nachos. Or a plate of melted string cheese. Or the chocolatey bottom of a Drumstick.

  I wonder what Phish or Alkaline Trio or Islands songs you heard while driving in your black car with the windows down, smoking a cigarette, wearing your Ray-Bans.

  I wonder what jokes were brewing inside your head.

  I wonder if you watched any adorable videos of your niece and, if so, which ones.

  I wonder what plans you made for later that day and for tomorrow.

  I wonder what you thought about before you did the thing that changed all of us forever.

  I wonder if, despite the bruise on the inside of your arm, you were happy.

  • • •

  The 5:45 p.m. possum that Mom deemed your spirit animal stopped coming around a few weeks ago. But this morning at 9:30 a.m., as I sipped my morning coffee while staring out the window, I saw three possums strut back and forth across the back fence, one of them carrying a baby on its back.

  So, it turns out that Mom was right. Your spirit is alive and well and living in the shape of a possum.

  41

  One Year, One Day

  I carry the most painful memories inside my muscles and bones. I remember falling to the ground on the bathroom floor. Pounding my fists on the pavement. Sitting on my knees in the dirt next to a hole in the ground. Standing exposed on a pulpit before hundreds of people, reading these horrible words aloud:

  I want to say that we will never get over this loss, that it has ruined our family, torn us apart, and left us all bloody and begging for mercy—that our hearts have left our bodies and will be buried in the ground today. That there will always be a gaping, painful hole in our family and a feeling that something isn’t right, that no holiday, vacation, meal, or conversation will ever be the same.

  I want to say that I don’t know how I will continue to exist in the world in the same way ever again. But, I know if Harris were listening—and I have to pray that he is out there listening, continuing to be our tour guide through the cosmos—that he would tell me to stop future-tripping, to just be in this moment today.

  So, I will say that today, I miss my brother more than I can possibly explain. Today, I am devastated and sad and angry and empty. Today, I long to bring him back and fix things and try to understand. Today, I would pay a million dollars to hear him laugh or say hi, sister, to see that one self-conscious smile that he always wore. Today, I love my brother with all of my being. And I always will.

  Today.

  Today is my birthday.

  Today is my birthday that will forever fall the day after you died.

  I lie in bed for several moments in the quiet before putting my feet on the floor. Mike has let me sleep in. The dog is curled up in his nook beside me. I reach for my phone by the bedside table. The Facebook Happy Birthday messages are in full swing. Mom says: “Hope it’s a decent 35th birthday my special, kind, sensitive, beautiful daughter. I adore you and am beyond proud of all that you have become. You are so strong in your convictions and such an amazing mom. You were the best sister on earth. He was so lucky to have you. Let’s hold hands and keep moving forward. Our loving family bond will help. It has to. I love you.”

  Last year, Facebook confused the condolence messages with the birthday messages, so every time I logged on, I was greeted with an exploding graphic of balloons and confetti. I lie there and think: Why didn’t I turn these comments off?

  After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling fan, I head downstairs. There are flowers on the dining room table and a colorful drawing by the tiny artist who lives in my house. The note in Magic Marker says: “To the best mommy in the world on her birthday. Love, Iris 2016.” She’s watching The Princess Bride, your favorite childhood movie. Well, maybe second to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. As a kid, you compulsively did the dance Pee-wee does in the biker bar scene to the song “Tequila.” I can still hear Mom squealing, “Harris, do the dance! Do the dance!” It always brought the house down.
Third place for favorite childhood movie was definitely Labyrinth. When you were Iris’s age, you would watch these movies on repeat. They would end and you would demand that Mom rewind the tapes and play them again and again and again. Iris does this, too, now.

  I’m immediately greeted with a smothering hug and “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” I sit on the couch. Mike wraps his arms around me. We watch the scene in the fire swamp with the ROUS’s (Rodents of Unusual Size). Bursts of fire erupt every few steps that Westley and Buttercup take. Iris tells us “That’s fire! Make pizza!” Pizza ovens are her only frame of reference for a flame that large.

  I’m sandwiched between my husband to my left and my daughter to my right and we’re watching TV in our pajamas and tears form in my eyes when I think of you, and I take a deep breath and look out the window and see the blue sky and the clouds moving along and a bird flying, and then three more, and I think: Life is happening all around me.

  I have Iris. And Mike. And Mom. And Dad. And Wiley, the dog. And my friends. And my students. And the sun. And the sky.

  Life is happening all around me.

  • • •

  When we were little, Benihana was your favorite birthday destination. You liked wearing the tall red hat and haggling the chef. The last time we came here together on Christmas Eve, 2013, you took a photo of our chef and posted it on Instagram with a caption that read: “Houston Benihana. They made this Mexican guy be called Chan. I ain’t buyin it.” While I don’t want to celebrate my birthday, I don’t want Dad to be alone for dinner. Mom is away on her “I’m Gonna Do Whatever I Want Because My Son Died and I Fucking Deserve It” Girl’s Trip, and we all have to eat. So, Benihana it is.

  At dinner, Dad and I go through two bottles of sake. Iris is riveted by the cooking show or attempting to shovel rice into her mouth with chopsticks or curled up on the ground with her rain boots kicked off her feet watching this weird Canadian clown show called The Big Comfy Couch on my iPhone. Mike has gotten me a white cake with white icing and colorful sprinkles that simply says: Day. The waitress brings it over in a giant, pink box. She lights a single candle. The birthday song is sung. I make a wish and blow out my candle. Iris “helps” and keeps saying “Mommy Happy Birthday!” She loves birthdays. It’s not so bad.