by Ryan Manion
To this day, that peaceful feeling sometimes comes back to me for a moment—when life feels effortless, my mind is at ease, and all seems right in the world.
But now it dissolves in an instant. In fact, as soon as I experience that kind of serenity, I become terrified. What terrible tragedy is going to shatter this picture of peace? I ask myself. I still wonder if the sense of calm I experienced that day had been a harbinger of the doom to come. I worry that I was foolish not to have recognized it for what it was. All the signs of catastrophe were right in front me. How could I have been so blind?
This train of thought is, of course, completely paranoid and insane. It’s a shame that pain can become so deeply pressed into our past that it robs us of the joys of our future. And though I recognize the thought process as irrational, I also know that it’s just one of the many profound ways that my brother’s sudden death has changed me.
I’m not naive enough to believe that, because some devastating tragedy struck my family once, it won’t strike again. It’s almost as though I look for it now.
I used to watch those horrific news stories on NBC’s Dateline with a distant fascination. Now, if I watch them at all, it’s because I want to know exactly what dangers are out there so I can prepare myself and my family for them. A ten-year-old girl walks out the door to take the garbage out and never returns home; a young mother disappears only to be found dead on the side of a country road; I simply can’t absorb these kinds of stories casually anymore.
The fear and paranoia that follow in the wake of grief can create a tremendous roadblock. It stunts our personal growth and darkens our overall sense of well-being. Some people respond to unexpected and trying situations with passive acquiescence, and others with fire and fury. I responded by heightening my vigilance. After Travis’s death, I found myself compelled to be wary. I was always on the lookout for the next great tragedy to befall me.
This hurled me down some very dark and troublesome paths, from panic attacks to self-destructive behaviors. But it also led me to some amazing gifts, like recovering my sense of humor and living with intention.
My brother’s death has changed me in many ways, some for the worse, some for the better. I’m not proud to admit that, before Travis died, I had developed a mild callousness about the suffering of others and skepticism about the possibility that I myself might experience a similar fate.
I remember being wrapped up in my own little world in college, for instance, when my dad called to tell me that my grandfather had died. He told me when the funeral services would be held and I immediately shot back: “Dad, I’m sorry but I can’t go. I’ve got finals.”
It’s crazy to me now that I responded that way. Was I really going to miss such a salient moment for exams? Did I even consider the sadness that my dad was feeling? No, I didn’t. Even when Travis deployed, for the first and second times, I don’t think I fully appreciated the gravity of the moment or the support I should have given.
It was 2006 and 2007. Yes, I was vaguely aware that service members were dying, but I rarely thought about them. They weren’t Travis. My brother was one of thousands of highly trained warriors doing this job. And he was great at it. Everyone who knew Travis reinforced that to me whenever we talked about his deployment. What were the chances that something would go wrong?
It’s an ugly thought, I know. And an uncomfortable one to dredge back up. Unfortunately, it’s one of many memories I have that make me cringe. There were many times where I managed my grief poorly, particularly in the earliest days after we received the knock at the door. In one instance, only days after Travis was killed, I saw red and completely tore into a stranger whom I felt was disrespecting my brother’s sacrifice.
There was a civic building in our town that, as a political statement, tallied the deaths of all the men and women killed in the war on terror. Travis was familiar with the building, and had criticized the display as distasteful. One day, before his deployment, he entered the building and told the people responsible for the display that he found it disgraceful. They responded that they thought it was important that the public know young men and women were dying.
“If you really care,” Travis told them, “put their names up there. Let people learn their names and remember them.”
A couple days after his death, I noticed that the number on the front of the building had increased by one. I stormed into the office and ripped apart some poor employee at the front desk.
“Don’t you dare change that number for my brother!” I screamed at her. “He’s not just a f*cking number!”
Yikes.
As I write this more than a decade later, I feel very disconnected from the woman who stormed into that office. What was I thinking?
But that’s what an unexpected and unwelcome knock at the door can do to you. The fact is, grief will transform you. Whether you are grieving the loss of an identity you once had or the loss of a loved one, at some point, you will look in the mirror and see someone you simply don’t recognize staring back at you. It’s inevitable. Maybe you’ll be proud of what you see, and maybe you’ll be ashamed. At some point, I’d bet, you’ll be both.
The most important thing you can tell yourself is that you get the last word. Only you can determine how your experiences will change you. And only you can be held accountable for that transformation.
The experiences of April 29, 2007, ignited a chain of events that at different times has left me feeling hopeless, infuriated, and destructive. Through the years, I’ve bounced from convictions of strength and control to unexpected bouts of powerlessness and despair.
Like anyone who has received a jarring knock at the door—literal or figurative—I’ve been to the darkest, deepest, and ugliest corners of my mind. And I’ve learned a thing or two. I don’t hope to spare you the hurt or pain that comes with that knock. I don’t think I could. I only hope to share the lessons I learned in the process: the ones that have the power to transform you—in all the right ways—and to remind you that you are not alone.
Chapter 2
* * *
A Few Months Out:
My Drug of Choice
On a wooden beam in our basement, by the bench press on which he would punish himself nightly, Travis wrote his goals in permanent black marker.
All-American Wrestler
1st Team All Catholic in Lacrosse
Maintain 3.9 GPA
My aspirations were far more modest, rarely recorded, and—let’s be honest—not terribly admirable. While Travis’s key performance indicators consisted of grade point averages and athletic milestones, mine were quantified by number of parties attended or classes skipped without getting caught. Travis had a work ethic uncommon among most sixteen-year-olds, and as his older sister I found it fascinating, and a little unnerving. I marveled at Travis’s ability to set a goal one year out—even two years—and then work tirelessly to meet it.
Occasionally, I questioned what genetic material was absent from my DNA that caused this quality to skip me, but I never lost sleep about it. And though I admired his self-discipline and focus, I’m pretty sure Travis envied my vibrant social life and lighthearted attitude toward responsibility.
In the finished section of that same basement, Travis and I would spend every Friday and Saturday night. No matter what may have been on our individual agendas for the night, we always ended up at our usual rendezvous spot: making sandwiches; chatting about our friends and complaining about our enemies; arguing over who got control of the TV remote; and, ultimately, falling asleep on adjacent couches.
During one such weekend, I told him about a party that was scheduled for the following Saturday night. An upperclassman’s parents would be out of town, and the entire school was already abuzz over how many kegs would be delivered to the house and who was going to be there. “You should come, Trav,” I said. Referring to my best friend, I added, “You can drive Krista and me.”
Travis was in the throes of wrestling season at L
a Salle College High School, an all-boys Catholic institution outside Philadelphia.
As a freshman, I had attended its sister school, Gwynedd Mercy Academy, after my parents pleaded with me to give it a shot. As soon as the year was over, I returned to public school, having never really given myself the chance to like the parochial school.
Given his goals, Travis was not a big partier, but he was sociable, well liked, and needed a change of scenery, so I thought my party invitation wasn’t a half-bad idea.
The following weekend, Travis and I pulled into Krista’s driveway and he beeped the horn. I was thrilled to have my little brother as chauffeur for the evening and made him pick up several other friends from their houses before we all headed over to the north side of town for the party.
A few hours into the festivities, the cops arrived, lights flashing, and we teenagers scattered like cockroaches. Travis, Krista, and I quickly found one another and joined the mad rush toward the back of the house. We barreled through the kitchen door, hopped the fence that surrounded the property, and sprinted for the woods behind the house.
Those woods were our ticket to freedom. They also represented a blessed escape from the terrifying wrath of my parents, who almost certainly would have disowned me for what would have been the third underage drinking citation in my high school career.
As we kids charged across a small footbridge at the back of the property, I got thrown and ended up in a shallow creek a few feet below.
Travis quickly scooped me up onto dry land and we continued our sprint until the terrain opened into a vast cornfield and we knew we were safe. I stopped and took a deep breath. Standing still for that moment, as the moonlight poured over us, I became aware of pain coursing through my leg. I looked down and saw that my shin was covered in blood. My khaki pants were red.
“We gotta go back,” Travis said, observing my leg. “We have to take care of that.”
Hell no, I thought. Did I mention this would be my third underage? I had too much on the line. If I was going out, I was going out in this cornfield, with my two best friends, not into the hands of furious parents. Krista pleaded with me to stop being so stubborn.
Travis was calm but stern. He had made up his mind. We were going back and that was it. He was right, of course, as he usually was, and he persuaded me to turn back. He hadn’t been drinking, and if he could just get us to where the car was parked, we’d quietly slip in and drive away—no problem.
Krista hung back with other friends as they moved deeper into the cornfield to wait out the police. No sense in her getting caught, too. As Travis and I started to trek back, I felt the mixture of blood and creek water sloshing around in my shoes, and with each step a piercing, throbbing sensation cutting through my leg. Finally, we closed in on the property and the car was within sight.
But just as we rounded a giant pine tree, a blinding light shone in our eyes.
Busted.
“Hey! Kids! Get over here.” A square-jawed officer examined us with his flashlight. He wanted names, ages, and a full account of our whereabouts that evening. Somewhere in the interrogation session, a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head. His eyes softened and his lips turned up into a smile. “Hey, wait. You’re Travis Manion, you said?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hell of a wrestling season you’re having, kid.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Travis was no fool. He saw an opportunity and he seized it. The two of them chatted like old friends: semifinals, school records, weight classes, and who would be best positioned to take on that heavyweight monster from Archbishop Wood High School next weekend. That kid was huge. Were we even sure he was a teenager? I stood nervously behind him trying to play the part of the cool, calm, and collected older sister who hadn’t just drunk a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and wasn’t hiding a pretty significant injury.
Within minutes, the police officer was chuckling and giving Travis a pretend right hook to the shoulder. Two more minutes of polite charm and verbal jujitsu and Travis artfully changed the subject. “Sir, this is my sister, Ryan, and her leg is bleeding pretty badly. I haven’t been drinking tonight, and I’d like to get her to a hospital. I think she needs stitches, sir.”
The police officer suddenly seemed to remember he was busting high school kids at a keg party and not catching up with an old friend. For the first time, he turned his attention toward me and looked disapprovingly at my leg. He glanced side-to-side quickly and turned back to grimace at us. “Get outta here,” he commanded. “Now!” He didn’t need to tell us twice.
Once inside the car, with Travis behind the steering wheel, we looked at each other.
“I can’t go to the hospital,” I pleaded, my voice higher-pitched than I expected.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Travis said. “Mom and Dad will kill us if they find out.”
I didn’t, in fact, get the stitches I needed that night, and I’ve got a pretty nasty scar to prove it. But thanks to Travis, I didn’t get the underage drinking citation, either. What I did get was a lesson in pain management that I’ve had to learn over and over again since my brother’s death: Adrenaline is one hell of a drug.
When fear hits, your pulse spikes, your legs start moving before you even tell them to, and you don’t feel a thing. It’s amazing. You’re speeding to the next target: the back door, the footbridge, the woods. You’re almost home free. Is your leg bleeding? Who knows? Who cares? You’re moving with wild abandon and an eye on the next marker.
That is, until you’re not. Eventually, the moonlight shines down to expose the truth, and pretty soon you’re not moving at all.
This was my experience with grief after losing my brother. At first, I couldn’t imagine putting on a fresh pair of pants in the morning or forcing down a little bit of breakfast. But once I got past those first few zombie-like days of merely surviving, my brain went into hyperdrive.
It wanted to make up for all that lost time when it had nearly wilted away. Pretty soon, the thoughts were flowing like water from a fire hose: What do they mean, a sniper shot him? Are they sure he’s dead? Was he in pain? Was he alone? What about my daughter? How will she ever get to know her uncle Travis? What about me? What about the memories we still had left to make?
Fear and sadness and anxiety would creep from my brain to my spine, and in that moment I’d give anything to quiet the inner monologue that was quickly taking over. I needed a goal. I needed focus. I needed a distraction. I needed to keep moving. I couldn’t risk pausing long enough for my brain to remember what was going on. Just keep sprinting for the cornfield. Don’t let the moon shine down and remind you of the wound.
As I said, adrenaline is a powerful drug. But it’s not always a bad one. In fact, it’s gotten me through some of the darkest days of my life. It’s my drug of choice.
Having an immediate goal to work toward and enough shock in the system to fuel it can be an incredibly potent antidote to grief. I would hungrily swallow up any invitation that promised to pull me out of the darkness or distract me from the black, heavy cloud over my head. Anything to force me out of bed in the morning and channel my focus to a simple task in front of me.
Many reasonable people whose worlds have been rocked by tragedy choose to work toward well-measured, appropriate goals. Such goals provide them with a structure that fills otherwise empty days and gives meaning to lives that otherwise may appear empty.
Without them, these people might fall apart. But with them, they can make progress—slow, steady, and encouraging progress. Growth happens in stages.
That’s not how I typically do things. Or I should say, it’s not how I’m hardwired to do things.
In the early days after Travis was killed, my decision making was more impulsive than rational. Impulsive decisions can be catastrophic, and a few of mine have been. But they’ve also been a great way for me to channel my nervous energy.
I think, subconsciously, I believed that as long as I was doing something—anythi
ng—then I wouldn’t have to acknowledge the intense pain that was overtaking my spirit and fighting to get out. It’s sort of like when your leg is bleeding out in a stampede of intoxicated teenagers through the woods, but you’re too hopped up on a cocktail of fear and motion to notice—if you catch my drift.
People have told me I’m courageous and I’d like to think that I am. But it’s not always courage that spurs me on. Sometimes it’s pure bullheadedness. Rather than testing the waters by slowly working my way into the shallow end of the pool, I tend to catapult myself off the diving board into the deep end, where I hit the water in a graceless, but powerful cannonball.
But what happens if you don’t know how to swim?
Ignorance can make you fearless and bold; it can also force you to learn some critical survivor skills on the fly. For better or for worse, embracing my own ignorance in the spirit of boldness proved to be one of the ways I channeled my grief after my brother died.
Two weeks before he was killed, Travis called home from Iraq. “I want to run the Marine Corps Marathon,” he told my dad.
“That’s great, Trav,” my dad responded.
“And I want you to run it with me,” he finished.
My father was then in his early fifties and in solid shape, but this was no small request. After running the Marine Corps Marathon a couple of times when he was younger, my dad had retired his marathon shoes—forever, he thought. But he wasn’t about to say no to his son fighting a war thousands of miles away.
“Let’s do it,” he replied.
In mid-May, when the funeral services were over and my parents, extended family, and friends were gathered in the living room, my dad remembered his promise to Travis. “I’m still going to run that marathon,” he proclaimed to the quiet gathering of distraught, dumbstruck family members.
“I’ll run too, Tom,” said Chris, my dad’s youngest brother.
“I’m in,” echoed his wife, my aunt Susan.