What could’ve & should’ve been.
📷: Em Bateman
I’ve been avoiding this space. I tend to avoid things that are uncomfortable, even when I know it’s something that is both good for me and healthy.
Ethan would have been 23 today. That feels old. His birthday kind of snuck up on me this year. Honestly, most things have. I’ve found a rhythm of life that allows me to be complacent and avoid the hard things- even when I know those hard things are good for me. But, like any good older sister, while I may not be able to do something for my own sake, I will do it for my little brother. I want to remember him. I’m willing (somewhat begrudgingly) to feel the hard things because Ethan is worth it.
God I miss him.
In some ways though, as the years pass, I feel like I don’t know him anymore. Like, yes, I know the 16 year old Ethan who was, for better or worse, the epitome of a teenage boy. But I don’t know the 23 year old Ethan.
Those early adult years are full of change. Hell- I got married when I was 23. Who Ethan was at 16 and who he should’ve and could’ve be at 23 wildly different.
The first few years after Ethan died (I still hate saying that) his birthday was hard because I couldn’t celebrate the person I knew Ethan to be. This year the hard has shifted. I am not mourning the person I know, but the person I don’t. Any image I conjure of his life now is made up of my own imagination. As the years pass and my family grows and changes Ethan is stuck as a 16 year old boy.
The sharpness of the first few years has been replaced with an achy longing. It doesn’t hurt less, but it hurts different. I kind of hate it. One- because I hate change. Two- because it reminds me of the distance between now and when he was here. So much time has passed and so much more will pass. And no one will ever get to know what a 23 year old Ethan James would have been like.
How fucked up is that?
As I lament the passing years, I’m reminded of something someone told me in the months following the accident. We not only grieve the loss of the person we love, but the loss of shalom. Shalom meaning nothing missing, nothing broken. Death- especially traumatic and untimely deaths- shatters any hope of shalom this side of heaven. It’s not possible for me to build a life that brings shalom. I can have as many kids, as much money, the most fulfilling career, etc. and it won’t work. I will still look at my phone’s favorite list and remember I can’t call the third person on that list.
There is a part of me that thinks it a good thing that shalom was shattered so fully and so early for me. As a perfectionist the painful reminder that I can’t make it happen is good for me. I don’t think I will ever understand why it had to come at such a high price. I’ve wrestled with that a lot throughout the years. I don’t have any answers, but I'm grateful for a God that lets me blame him and be angry and understands my longing for shalom. At least, my brain knows I’m grateful though right now I just feel bitter.