I cannot recall the exact time frame, but if I had to guess I would say from about age 4 to age 8—that’s how long my Aunt Marianne lived with me, along with my mother and my elder sister. The oldest memories I have seem to all involve her.
If you can imagine two people who were simply inseparable, that was Marianne and I. We did everything together. We endeavored in new adventures every day. From teaching me how to ride a bicycle, to helping me find the perfect form for my basketball shot, all the way to sneaking into the church across the street when it was still under construction—we were always finding new ways to make each other laugh. I maintain that my childhood was as good as it could have been, and I attribute much of this to her.
“Take this,” she said to me once when we had snuck into the empty church. She handed me a paint stick covered on one end in dry, crusty, white paint. “That’s your sword.” And so we spent the next couple hours restoring order to our kingdom, slaying the dragon, and rescuing the princess who had been locked in the tower. All in one night’s work. That was when I knew we were the tag team that could not be stopped by any force in the whole world.
When I was 8, Marianne moved out for reasons that I didn’t understand in my young age. We saw each other a great deal less. It seemed as I closed the chapter on my youth, I closed up all the positive memories I shared with Marianne. We made our last one and our lives moved on without our consent, as life is wont to do.
Some years later I started middle school. Basketball became an everyday thing, and sometimes Marianne would show up at my basketball games, always equipped with her “professional” camera to take pictures of me playing. Though it only happened a few times, seeing her at my basketball games was a feeling I will never forget. She was my biggest fan, and even in my age of ignorance, I was thankful for it.
That camera was something I remember most distinctly when I think about Marianne. Whenever we would go on vacation to Wolf Lake, she would always have it in her hands, taking pictures of all of us running through the swampy water or laying out on the dock. From the time I was quite little to the last time I saw her, she always had it slung over her shoulder. She was always so adamant about catching and containing the smiles and the laughs—the happy things and the moments that are precious to any human. It wasn’t until a couple years that I realized why she had been doing that.
On September 10th, 2013—World Suicide Prevention Day—my dad sat me down to break the news to me that would alter my life forever. I remember the steadiness in his monotone voice when he said, “your Aunt Marianne took her own life today.” The only thing I can remember is how warm my tears felt against my cheeks, and how I couldn’t seem to stop them from falling.
We were to write no more memories together; what I had was all I would ever have as long as I lived. I had to put the pen down, and all I could do was read and reread what was already written. She had closed her own book and stopped lending her craft to mine. She had written her final chapter, and it was a chapter I was forced to borrow and use as the first real heartbreak of my own.
Naturally, when someone you love dies, you are always discovering new feelings of sorrow beneath every unturned stone and behind every hidden corner. It was an everyday thing for me to recognize new feelings of guilt, to recall old memories that I couldn’t think about without crying, and to question everything I had known. I was only 14 years old and couldn’t possibly wrap my head around what had caused such a person—a person I only ever remembered being happy—to leave the world where she was loved by so many. I gleaned pieces of this ongoing suffering everywhere I went because every new setting lent me new thoughts about my Aunt Marianne.
Shortly after Marianne’s death, some of my family went back to my Aunt Barb’s house to sort out some of Marianne’s belongings. Everything she owned was stashed into my Aunt Barb’s attic; it had been sitting there collecting dust since that September day just a few months before.
While my mother and some of my aunts were conversing in the living room downstairs, I decided to explore Marianne’s things. I snuck up the creaky stairs as quietly as I could and flipped the tiny light on. My eyes were drawn so many ways. I stood there among the things she had left behind. I saw a pair of converse; I recognized them as the ones she wore whenever we would play basketball together. I saw drumsticks; I recognized them as the ones she would keep in her glove compartment, taking them out at red lights and tapping them on the dash, showing me how to keep time. I recognized a hoodie; the one that she was wearing the last time I saw her.
I rifled through some boxes before coming to a bookshelf. It was within the second book that I found it, wedged between two pages, marking the spot of a book she would never open again: a photo of a small girl, sitting on a dock in her flower printed swimsuit, floaties wrapped around her miniscule arms, smiling from one ear to the other. It was a photo of me.
As I stood there staring while having no sense of what my eyes were looking at, I pulled myself back into focus. On the ground next to the bookshelf lay an incredible number of photo albums. My curiosity tempted me to open them, but I knew exactly what I would find. I closed the book with the picture still inside, set it back on the shelf, and descended the stairs just as I had come up them—quietly, somberly.
I never told anybody about the photo. Years passed and everyone in my family mourned Marianne in her own ways—I in the daily remembrance of what I had found in between the pages of an unfinished book.
It took me four years before I finally accepted that she was gone—accepted that she would never walk through my bedroom door and hug me, never laugh with me, never wipe my tears, never be beside me again. It was within this acceptance that I discovered the deepest perplexity about grief: she was gone but she was still everywhere. I could hear her laugh echoing behind mine. I could see her facial features when I saw short glimpses of myself in the reflections of glass doors. I could see a second shadow behind mine on any sunny day. Somehow, it felt she was still present in some way, though I wasn’t altogether sure how that could be.
In the summer of 2018 I returned to Wolf Lake with my family. I often imagined the small girl with the flower patterned swimsuit and the floaties sitting there on the dock, smiling at the camera, or maybe the person behind the camera.
One morning I went for a bike ride around the lake, and I ran into my Aunt Barb who was going for a walk. We stopped in the street and our conversation led to how much we both missed Marianne. “You know, don’t tell anyone I told you this,” she said to me. “But you were always her favorite.” I didn’t have it in me to say much, but if I did, I would have said, I already know. I knew because of an old photograph wedged between the dusty pages of an unfamiliar book.
The truth is that we seldom realize how much we mean to the people around us. I dwelled on this thought almost every day for five whole years. I knew my bond with my Aunt Marianne was strong. I knew I loved her, but never stopped to wonder how much she loved me. I didn’t realize the space I occupied in her life. This is a blindspot many of us possess. Our presence in this world—all of us individually—is significant, but we lose sight of it so easily.
I created a collage of my favorite photos of Marianne and I, which hangs over my bed. One night as I sat in my bed, I glanced upon it, as I do quite often. Almost out of nowhere, I realized something I had never thought of before, and I became bewildered, followed by a blanketing sense of comfort.
When I began to compare her and I side-by-side, the similarities were shocking. Aside from the short, curly hair, I realized deeper congruences. We had the same interests; basketball and space were our most frequent topics of conversation. We had similar mannerisms; our laughs were almost indistinguishable. We had almost identical personalities; you’d have trouble finding two people more similar than her and I.
All throughout our lives we come into contact with a multitude of people. Of these people, there are a select few that we would hold in a different category altogether: the ones whom we admire. When we admire a certain person, we try, whether consciously or subconsciously, to be like her. We acquire traits of other people because every single person affects every other person. We occupy space in every life. We appear in the pages of many others books. We are all intertwined; we lend to each others stories just by existing.
It was the poet Emily Dickinson who wrote, “unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” Whenever I find myself missing my dear Aunt Marianne, I don’t find it helpful to go through old photos of her, nor do I find comfort in speaking out loud in hopes that she might hear me. Gone as she may seem, I know she is not really. I simply take a walk to the nearest mirror, and glance upon myself, because I know who’s really looking back at me.
If you can imagine two people who were simply inseparable, that was Marianne and I. We did everything together. We endeavored in new adventures every day. From teaching me how to ride a bicycle, to helping me find the perfect form for my basketball shot, all the way to sneaking into the church across the street when it was still under construction—we were always finding new ways to make each other laugh. I maintain that my childhood was as good as it could have been, and I attribute much of this to her.
“Take this,” she said to me once when we had snuck into the empty church. She handed me a paint stick covered on one end in dry, crusty, white paint. “That’s your sword.” And so we spent the next couple hours restoring order to our kingdom, slaying the dragon, and rescuing the princess who had been locked in the tower. All in one night’s work. That was when I knew we were the tag team that could not be stopped by any force in the whole world.
When I was 8, Marianne moved out for reasons that I didn’t understand in my young age. We saw each other a great deal less. It seemed as I closed the chapter on my youth, I closed up all the positive memories I shared with Marianne. We made our last one and our lives moved on without our consent, as life is wont to do.
Some years later I started middle school. Basketball became an everyday thing, and sometimes Marianne would show up at my basketball games, always equipped with her “professional” camera to take pictures of me playing. Though it only happened a few times, seeing her at my basketball games was a feeling I will never forget. She was my biggest fan, and even in my age of ignorance, I was thankful for it.
That camera was something I remember most distinctly when I think about Marianne. Whenever we would go on vacation to Wolf Lake, she would always have it in her hands, taking pictures of all of us running through the swampy water or laying out on the dock. From the time I was quite little to the last time I saw her, she always had it slung over her shoulder. She was always so adamant about catching and containing the smiles and the laughs—the happy things and the moments that are precious to any human. It wasn’t until a couple years that I realized why she had been doing that.
On September 10th, 2013—World Suicide Prevention Day—my dad sat me down to break the news to me that would alter my life forever. I remember the steadiness in his monotone voice when he said, “your Aunt Marianne took her own life today.” The only thing I can remember is how warm my tears felt against my cheeks, and how I couldn’t seem to stop them from falling.
We were to write no more memories together; what I had was all I would ever have as long as I lived. I had to put the pen down, and all I could do was read and reread what was already written. She had closed her own book and stopped lending her craft to mine. She had written her final chapter, and it was a chapter I was forced to borrow and use as the first real heartbreak of my own.
Naturally, when someone you love dies, you are always discovering new feelings of sorrow beneath every unturned stone and behind every hidden corner. It was an everyday thing for me to recognize new feelings of guilt, to recall old memories that I couldn’t think about without crying, and to question everything I had known. I was only 14 years old and couldn’t possibly wrap my head around what had caused such a person—a person I only ever remembered being happy—to leave the world where she was loved by so many. I gleaned pieces of this ongoing suffering everywhere I went because every new setting lent me new thoughts about my Aunt Marianne.
Shortly after Marianne’s death, some of my family went back to my Aunt Barb’s house to sort out some of Marianne’s belongings. Everything she owned was stashed into my Aunt Barb’s attic; it had been sitting there collecting dust since that September day just a few months before.
While my mother and some of my aunts were conversing in the living room downstairs, I decided to explore Marianne’s things. I snuck up the creaky stairs as quietly as I could and flipped the tiny light on. My eyes were drawn so many ways. I stood there among the things she had left behind. I saw a pair of converse; I recognized them as the ones she wore whenever we would play basketball together. I saw drumsticks; I recognized them as the ones she would keep in her glove compartment, taking them out at red lights and tapping them on the dash, showing me how to keep time. I recognized a hoodie; the one that she was wearing the last time I saw her.
I rifled through some boxes before coming to a bookshelf. It was within the second book that I found it, wedged between two pages, marking the spot of a book she would never open again: a photo of a small girl, sitting on a dock in her flower printed swimsuit, floaties wrapped around her miniscule arms, smiling from one ear to the other. It was a photo of me.
As I stood there staring while having no sense of what my eyes were looking at, I pulled myself back into focus. On the ground next to the bookshelf lay an incredible number of photo albums. My curiosity tempted me to open them, but I knew exactly what I would find. I closed the book with the picture still inside, set it back on the shelf, and descended the stairs just as I had come up them—quietly, somberly.
I never told anybody about the photo. Years passed and everyone in my family mourned Marianne in her own ways—I in the daily remembrance of what I had found in between the pages of an unfinished book.
It took me four years before I finally accepted that she was gone—accepted that she would never walk through my bedroom door and hug me, never laugh with me, never wipe my tears, never be beside me again. It was within this acceptance that I discovered the deepest perplexity about grief: she was gone but she was still everywhere. I could hear her laugh echoing behind mine. I could see her facial features when I saw short glimpses of myself in the reflections of glass doors. I could see a second shadow behind mine on any sunny day. Somehow, it felt she was still present in some way, though I wasn’t altogether sure how that could be.
In the summer of 2018 I returned to Wolf Lake with my family. I often imagined the small girl with the flower patterned swimsuit and the floaties sitting there on the dock, smiling at the camera, or maybe the person behind the camera.
One morning I went for a bike ride around the lake, and I ran into my Aunt Barb who was going for a walk. We stopped in the street and our conversation led to how much we both missed Marianne. “You know, don’t tell anyone I told you this,” she said to me. “But you were always her favorite.” I didn’t have it in me to say much, but if I did, I would have said, I already know. I knew because of an old photograph wedged between the dusty pages of an unfamiliar book.
The truth is that we seldom realize how much we mean to the people around us. I dwelled on this thought almost every day for five whole years. I knew my bond with my Aunt Marianne was strong. I knew I loved her, but never stopped to wonder how much she loved me. I didn’t realize the space I occupied in her life. This is a blindspot many of us possess. Our presence in this world—all of us individually—is significant, but we lose sight of it so easily.
I created a collage of my favorite photos of Marianne and I, which hangs over my bed. One night as I sat in my bed, I glanced upon it, as I do quite often. Almost out of nowhere, I realized something I had never thought of before, and I became bewildered, followed by a blanketing sense of comfort.
When I began to compare her and I side-by-side, the similarities were shocking. Aside from the short, curly hair, I realized deeper congruences. We had the same interests; basketball and space were our most frequent topics of conversation. We had similar mannerisms; our laughs were almost indistinguishable. We had almost identical personalities; you’d have trouble finding two people more similar than her and I.
All throughout our lives we come into contact with a multitude of people. Of these people, there are a select few that we would hold in a different category altogether: the ones whom we admire. When we admire a certain person, we try, whether consciously or subconsciously, to be like her. We acquire traits of other people because every single person affects every other person. We occupy space in every life. We appear in the pages of many others books. We are all intertwined; we lend to each others stories just by existing.
It was the poet Emily Dickinson who wrote, “unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” Whenever I find myself missing my dear Aunt Marianne, I don’t find it helpful to go through old photos of her, nor do I find comfort in speaking out loud in hopes that she might hear me. Gone as she may seem, I know she is not really. I simply take a walk to the nearest mirror, and glance upon myself, because I know who’s really looking back at me.