From the time Aaron was a baby, I took care of him quite a bit. The age difference between us allowed me to really feel like a helpful "big kid"; I got up and helped him go back to sleep when he woke up at night. I loved carrying him around on my hip and playing made up games with him. He was whip-smart, had these giant blue/green eyes and this kind of stern little voice that was seriously adorable. He was kind of a little ray of sunshine for my family during a difficult time with Bekah's diagnosis with autism. I remember trying to teach him to read when he was three years old and being amazed at how quickly he learned. Me and Jenn loved putting him in our little home movies because he'd say his lines with such attitude. I was his "second mama".
I remember Aaron learning to play the piano while still a kid, and the instructor at a music school told my mom that Aaron was the kind of talent you see maybe once or twice in a lifetime. He played piano with a natural, graceful ease and never really understood how cool it was.
I remember Aaron learning to play the piano while still a kid, and the instructor at a music school told my mom that Aaron was the kind of talent you see maybe once or twice in a lifetime. He played piano with a natural, graceful ease and never really understood how cool it was.
Fast-forward a bit to when I fell ill with Ulcerative Colitis, got divorced, and had to move back home with my parents. Their house was pretty full, my old room no longer mine. The only room they had for me that made sense was the double room above the garage...which was currently Aaron's room. I remember thinking, "Uh oh...I don't think any thirteen year old, even Aaron, wants to be stuck sharing space with his older sister." Especially given the nature of my illness. It was the kind of thing that made most people feel awkward and uncomfortable to talk about.
Despite our age difference, we learned as we shared space that we ended up being kindred spirits. We had so many similarities: our sense of humor, sarcasm. We both had tough shells that hid sensitive hearts. We both chose anger as a go-to reaction over sadness or fear, because it made us feel less helpless. We loved animals, and animals loved us. Especially him.
The differences we did have were funny to us and we joked about them often. He is one of neatest people I've ever known, his part of the room was always meticulously organized, whereas I was (at the time) kind of a slob. Being sick really compounded that. Also, I wore shoes until they were literally falling apart on my feet. I'd wear the same few shirts all the time for years on end with no heed to if they were trendy or not, it only mattered to me that I liked them. Aaron had way more of a sense of style than I ever had, and he took perfect care of his shoes and clothes, I wore mine until they were in tatters.
We used to quote lines from movies and songs back and forth, could do a whole scene without breaking character. We were both introverts, and when one of us came into our room angry, we didn't say anything to each other for sometimes an hour, because we knew that the other needed space. Then, a certain amount of time would go by, and one of us would quote some Joker line from The Dark Knight, and we'd laugh and everything was good.
Another of the movies we loved quoting was The Social Network. The line, "And you're not a hugger" while hugging each other. Neither of us were really "huggers", and maybe that's why I remember so well the hug Aaron gave me when I got home from having my first surgery to have my large intestine removed. I was trying to be brave before I went to the hospital. He was trying to be, too. But he hugged me so fiercely, and we both cried. I still remember how that hug felt, and I think I always will.
At some point in his teen years, Aaron started using drugs. Heroin became his drug of choice, and I watched my brother slip away from me. I used to dream about him using, while I stood there screaming at him and he couldn't hear me. I told him he was playing russian roulette, you couldn't safely use heroin. He went to a rehab program in Salt Lake for a few months, but he relapsed eventually. I began dreading getting a call that he had OD'd and died daily.
And then my parents found out about John Volken Academy; but it was Aaron who decided he wanted to go there. It would be out of state, with a minimum of two years. It would be hard, hard work. But he was sick of the russian roulette, and he went. And it was miraculous what happened there. It wasn't right away, and it took hard work for him, but...I got my brother back.
The first couple of months, we didn't have any communication except hand-written letters. You could tell he wrote letters with the same care that he had with anything that was his, his handwriting precise and perfectly-sized. That handwriting was like a smile, when I hadn't seen his face for months. Then, he was able to make calls and finally Skype almost weekly as he progressed through the program.
Despite our age difference, we learned as we shared space that we ended up being kindred spirits. We had so many similarities: our sense of humor, sarcasm. We both had tough shells that hid sensitive hearts. We both chose anger as a go-to reaction over sadness or fear, because it made us feel less helpless. We loved animals, and animals loved us. Especially him.
The differences we did have were funny to us and we joked about them often. He is one of neatest people I've ever known, his part of the room was always meticulously organized, whereas I was (at the time) kind of a slob. Being sick really compounded that. Also, I wore shoes until they were literally falling apart on my feet. I'd wear the same few shirts all the time for years on end with no heed to if they were trendy or not, it only mattered to me that I liked them. Aaron had way more of a sense of style than I ever had, and he took perfect care of his shoes and clothes, I wore mine until they were in tatters.
We used to quote lines from movies and songs back and forth, could do a whole scene without breaking character. We were both introverts, and when one of us came into our room angry, we didn't say anything to each other for sometimes an hour, because we knew that the other needed space. Then, a certain amount of time would go by, and one of us would quote some Joker line from The Dark Knight, and we'd laugh and everything was good.
Another of the movies we loved quoting was The Social Network. The line, "And you're not a hugger" while hugging each other. Neither of us were really "huggers", and maybe that's why I remember so well the hug Aaron gave me when I got home from having my first surgery to have my large intestine removed. I was trying to be brave before I went to the hospital. He was trying to be, too. But he hugged me so fiercely, and we both cried. I still remember how that hug felt, and I think I always will.
At some point in his teen years, Aaron started using drugs. Heroin became his drug of choice, and I watched my brother slip away from me. I used to dream about him using, while I stood there screaming at him and he couldn't hear me. I told him he was playing russian roulette, you couldn't safely use heroin. He went to a rehab program in Salt Lake for a few months, but he relapsed eventually. I began dreading getting a call that he had OD'd and died daily.
And then my parents found out about John Volken Academy; but it was Aaron who decided he wanted to go there. It would be out of state, with a minimum of two years. It would be hard, hard work. But he was sick of the russian roulette, and he went. And it was miraculous what happened there. It wasn't right away, and it took hard work for him, but...I got my brother back.
The first couple of months, we didn't have any communication except hand-written letters. You could tell he wrote letters with the same care that he had with anything that was his, his handwriting precise and perfectly-sized. That handwriting was like a smile, when I hadn't seen his face for months. Then, he was able to make calls and finally Skype almost weekly as he progressed through the program.
I remember the first time we Skyped and I finally did see his face, I recognized him again. The REAL him, the one I knew so well. He was back. And we had that real him for two years at the JVA. My parents were able to go visit him for weekends every few months, and they were there right after I had my daughter and he got to facetime with me from my hospital bed. He was so happy he was sober for those moments, he said it again and again. We talked like we used to when I'd been afraid I was going to die, and he was just a teenager. I watched my brother grow into a man I was proud of, and he was proud to be.
Several months later, he came home after two years sober and within a few weeks, he relapsed and OD'd. We were supposed to hang out a couple of times, but with the coronavirus keeping me isolated and some unseasonable weather, we had had to reschedule twice. The day he was supposed to come over was sunny. I noticed he hadn't answered my text from the night before. I called him. I kept calling him. He didn't answer, and a pit opened in my stomach that hasn't since gone away. I just had this feeling, like he was unreachable. And he was.
John and I went to his apartment and John went inside. I stayed in the car with our baby, but I just knew. I told myself, no. But I was overcome with this feeling that he wasn't here anymore. A bone-deep feeling that I couldn't shake. I'll never forget the look on John's face when he came out of the building. He knew the news would devastate me. He'd told Aaron not long before he went into the JVA, "If your sister lost you to that stuff, if she had to find you...she'd be devastated. You know that, right?" And honestly, if it weren't for me being in isolation due to being high-risk, I WOULD have been the one who went in there and broke into his room and found him. And I don't think I could have ever gotten that moment out of my head.
John took our daughter as I collapsed. I had one of those moments where you see yourself from outside your body, and I watched myself slam my hands into the sidewalk outside his apartment, howling like a wild animal. I never knew devastation and horror like I knew in that moment. He was in that building, but I couldn't go in. He was right there, but not really. All I could hear myself saying was, "I didn't even get to see him! I didn't get to see him in person!" I actually thought I might be sick from the knowledge that I hadn't seen my beloved little brother, hugged him, one last time. I hadn't hugged him or seen him in person for two years. And now I never would.
I don't want Aaron's death to overshadow his life. He was and IS so important to me. He worked so hard to be sober, and in a way I'm grateful that he didn't suffer a slow slide back into addiction, because the Jeckyll and Hyde part of addiction is devastating to people who love the addict. My brother had a moment of relapse and that was it. It doesn't erase all the hard work he put in, and the strides he made as a person. If there is anything after this, which I have told myself in the midst of this loss there HAS to be, I want to believe that he is free from his addiction there and that his soul is able to continue to grow without that shackle. Aaron and I were so similar in the things we suffered. My body reacts to the emotional and mental duress with autoimmune flare ups, and his fell back into addiction.
Aaron loved Harry Potter. We both read it every year in the Fall and Winter. We loved The Hunger Games, which we would read AFTER Harry Potter. We read a lot in the Winter because we both didn't like Winter, it helped pass the dreary, short days and long nights when we both suffered from insomnia.
I plan to read both series with my daughter and tell her all about how much her Uncle Aaron loved them. How we laughed at things in the movies that were lame compared to the books, like everybody's hair in Goblet of Fire, or the annoying metal "modern art" Cornucopia in the first Hunger Games that was nothing like the golden one in the book. I want to raise Avery listening to the Scott Joplin piano rags he played tirelessly until he could ask to play at Disneyland just for fun and because he loved it there, and the pianist would watch him, impressed, worrying for his job a little. I want her to listen to The Doors with me, and I'll sing the crazy parts of songs in my best Jim Morrison voice like Aaron and I always did. I want to keep my brother alive in every way I can, because he will always be alive to me.
Right now, I'm in some kind of denial where my brain keeps trying to think that he's still at the JVA in Washington, and if I just write him enough, he'll eventually answer back. I wear his shirts almost every day and every night. I kept a box he'd written his name on, that he had his toothbrush and razor and hairbrush in. I just want to see his name, see that he wrote it. He was here.
And maybe, eventually, I'll get one of those signs people talk about. Those signs that our loved ones are still alive, just somewhere else. I lay in bed at night, and I picture what that sunny day would have been if he'd come over and we'd sat in lawn chairs in my front yard and talked, and he'd met Avery. I think about it over and over so maybe I'll have a dream that seems so real, I'll have to wonder if somehow, it is.
Several months later, he came home after two years sober and within a few weeks, he relapsed and OD'd. We were supposed to hang out a couple of times, but with the coronavirus keeping me isolated and some unseasonable weather, we had had to reschedule twice. The day he was supposed to come over was sunny. I noticed he hadn't answered my text from the night before. I called him. I kept calling him. He didn't answer, and a pit opened in my stomach that hasn't since gone away. I just had this feeling, like he was unreachable. And he was.
John and I went to his apartment and John went inside. I stayed in the car with our baby, but I just knew. I told myself, no. But I was overcome with this feeling that he wasn't here anymore. A bone-deep feeling that I couldn't shake. I'll never forget the look on John's face when he came out of the building. He knew the news would devastate me. He'd told Aaron not long before he went into the JVA, "If your sister lost you to that stuff, if she had to find you...she'd be devastated. You know that, right?" And honestly, if it weren't for me being in isolation due to being high-risk, I WOULD have been the one who went in there and broke into his room and found him. And I don't think I could have ever gotten that moment out of my head.
John took our daughter as I collapsed. I had one of those moments where you see yourself from outside your body, and I watched myself slam my hands into the sidewalk outside his apartment, howling like a wild animal. I never knew devastation and horror like I knew in that moment. He was in that building, but I couldn't go in. He was right there, but not really. All I could hear myself saying was, "I didn't even get to see him! I didn't get to see him in person!" I actually thought I might be sick from the knowledge that I hadn't seen my beloved little brother, hugged him, one last time. I hadn't hugged him or seen him in person for two years. And now I never would.
I don't want Aaron's death to overshadow his life. He was and IS so important to me. He worked so hard to be sober, and in a way I'm grateful that he didn't suffer a slow slide back into addiction, because the Jeckyll and Hyde part of addiction is devastating to people who love the addict. My brother had a moment of relapse and that was it. It doesn't erase all the hard work he put in, and the strides he made as a person. If there is anything after this, which I have told myself in the midst of this loss there HAS to be, I want to believe that he is free from his addiction there and that his soul is able to continue to grow without that shackle. Aaron and I were so similar in the things we suffered. My body reacts to the emotional and mental duress with autoimmune flare ups, and his fell back into addiction.
Aaron loved Harry Potter. We both read it every year in the Fall and Winter. We loved The Hunger Games, which we would read AFTER Harry Potter. We read a lot in the Winter because we both didn't like Winter, it helped pass the dreary, short days and long nights when we both suffered from insomnia.
I plan to read both series with my daughter and tell her all about how much her Uncle Aaron loved them. How we laughed at things in the movies that were lame compared to the books, like everybody's hair in Goblet of Fire, or the annoying metal "modern art" Cornucopia in the first Hunger Games that was nothing like the golden one in the book. I want to raise Avery listening to the Scott Joplin piano rags he played tirelessly until he could ask to play at Disneyland just for fun and because he loved it there, and the pianist would watch him, impressed, worrying for his job a little. I want her to listen to The Doors with me, and I'll sing the crazy parts of songs in my best Jim Morrison voice like Aaron and I always did. I want to keep my brother alive in every way I can, because he will always be alive to me.
Right now, I'm in some kind of denial where my brain keeps trying to think that he's still at the JVA in Washington, and if I just write him enough, he'll eventually answer back. I wear his shirts almost every day and every night. I kept a box he'd written his name on, that he had his toothbrush and razor and hairbrush in. I just want to see his name, see that he wrote it. He was here.
And maybe, eventually, I'll get one of those signs people talk about. Those signs that our loved ones are still alive, just somewhere else. I lay in bed at night, and I picture what that sunny day would have been if he'd come over and we'd sat in lawn chairs in my front yard and talked, and he'd met Avery. I think about it over and over so maybe I'll have a dream that seems so real, I'll have to wonder if somehow, it is.
And if I don't, I'll think about that sunny day so often it will almost seem like a memory. The memory of my healthy, happy brother coming home to me.
