Goodbye, Brother

One thing about losing someone close…someone really close…is that you can picture how they’d react to everything. Sitting on a folding chair beside Steven’s open grave yesterday, an Amtrak train whooshed past. You know how close Alford Cemetery is to the tracks. I waved…I don’t know why, I guess you just wave to trains, you know? And instantly I saw the clearest mind movie. Steven, with his little smirky smile, shaking his head. “What? You waved to a train? At my funeral?” And it was so funny I started laughing instead of crying for a bit.

I gave a tribute at Steven’s funeral yesterday, and after, several people told me it was such a brave thing to do. How did I possibly keep it together enough to speak? They couldn’t imagine. But they didn’t understand…I felt desperate to stand up there and tell people about Steven. I’d choose that any day over crying alone in an airport, surrounded by people who know nothing of my brother, nor care to.

But I’ll admit, when I first began to write the tribute, it felt impossible. There were simply too many memories, but in my grief brain, I couldn’t just neatly scroll through them. They seemed to pop up completely at random. I grabbed a pencil and began to write on the back of the printed-out itinerary of my flight: Trying to piece together words for a tribute feels like trying to catch popcorn kernels flying out of a lidless kettle. Where do I even begin?

But eventually it occurred to me that I was one of the few witnesses to Steven’s return to Kenya four years ago. That most people at the funeral wouldn’t understand much about that side of Steven. So that’s what I wrote about, there on the back of my itinerary, and when I finished it felt right.

But the bombardment of popcorn-kernel memories is so real. I want to write down all the memories, but it feels impossible.

I have very few pictures in my phone of Steven and me together. You know how it is…when you’re the photographer, you rarely appear in frame. But I have one picture that our mom took a couple of years ago, and I found it so funny I saved it to my phone.

It was a Sunday afternoon in July several years ago, and Mom and Dad were planning to go to Wesley Yoder’s funeral. Wesley was not a relative, not someone from the church we grew up in, but he was a Local Character who sometimes wandered around my Dad’s warehouse even though he didn’t work there or anything. So I decided to go to his funeral with my parents. It was, after all, just up the street at Harrisburg Mennonite Church.

Steven came home for Sunday dinner, as he often did. “Hey Steven,” I said, “want to go to Wesley Yoder’s funeral with us?”

“Wesley Yoder died?” said Steven. “Sure, yeah, I’ll go to his funeral!”

I don’t remember what Steven was wearing. Probably a t-shirt and his favorite old track pants with the little burn holes in the leg. Nothing funeral-appropriate. So we dressed him up in some of Dad’s clothes that didn’t fit well. I wore my pleated black skirt from Thailand and a thrifted black silk knit shirt (that I later, regretably, ruined in the wash). And then, Mom snapped this candid shot.

I don’t know why, but this photo is so funny to me.

Popcorn memories. Seeing Steven’s car in the background of this pic reminds me of Steven’s old car, which was red. One day, I was riding in that car with Steven…probably back from a family trip to the coast. I reached into that molded-plastic pocket in the car door and pulled out a random little glass bottle of something red.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Oh, that is vole’s blood,” said Steven.

It was so off-the-wall that I…I guess I believed him momentarily? Because I said, “WHY do you have a vial of VOLE’S BLOOD in your CAR?” And he just busted up laughing.

The bottle actually contained touch-up paint. Which, if you know Steven, you know was often needed. Where the “vole’s blood” thing came from, I’ll never know. Every time I brought it up, Steven just laughed at me.

But back to the picture of me and Steven going to Wesley Yoder’s funeral…I keep thinking about it, partly because it’s one of the few pictures of the two of us on my phone, but also because I wore something very similar to Steven’s funeral. Although I packed my black funeral dress, when I tried it on, my sisters couldn’t zip it up. The zipper has always had issues, and I’ve also gained some weight since the last time I wore it, so a new solution was needed.

That’s why I pulled out the pleated black skirt again.

This week has passed in several stages, each its own sort of terrible. First, the initial shock and trip home alone…which was, I dare say, the worst stage of all. Then, the logistics. Endless, endless logistics, during which I’m sorry to say I was completely useless. I couldn’t bear the thought of planning a funeral, who sits where, what happens when, like I’m on the committee planning the mother-daughter tea rather than the FUNERAL of a HUMAN BEING who was MY BROTHER.

But some parts were easier. Like when Amy, Jenny, and I stopped at Steven’s house to pick out clothes to bury him in. The first thing I saw when I walked in was his bed, covered in a blanket I bought him for Christmas in 2015. His bookshelf, with a book I’d given him. Another shelf, with a thriving plant Amy had given him, and then, two stone elephants: a white one and a black one. The black one used to be mine, but he’d charmingly begged me to give it to him, to match his white one. I refused, of course, but then gave it to him last Christmas.

Such a bachelor house—lived-in, but not exactly messy. A few dishes in the sink. Tea bags in a basket on the counter. Laundry in the laundry room. His monogrammed Bible on his coffee table. Picking up the Bible, I opened it. There, acting as a bookmark, was a green plastic floss pick. We all laughed. What a Steven move.

When Steven and I went to Kenya four years ago, with Dad, we saw that many Kenyans wore beaded bracelets that bore the shape and colors of the Kenyan flag. I searched the stalls until I found one made with elastic thread that I hoped would fit his wrist, and got it for him for Christmas. He loved that bracelet, wore it every day, and by the end of the year, it was in tatters.

The next year, Ben had Steven’s name and bought him six Kenya bracelets he found on Etsy. Now, Amy, Jenny, and I hunted through cupboards until we found them, and brought one with us to make sure Steven would be buried in it. His nice suit was in his closet, clean and ready to go, and we brought that, too.

Being in Steven’s home, picking out his clothes, felt special. Honoring. This was our brother. But some of the other logistics just about sent me over the edge…like the panic when the funeral home said they couldn’t complete the autopsy repair in time for the funeral, and we had to switch funeral homes.

Then, the third stage came Thursday: the stage of People and Hugs.

There was no viewing Thursday due to the autopsy repair complication, but we had several visitations. And this was a really, really special time. We went to the Junction City fire station, where Steven worked for many years. All Steven’s buddies were there, telling their favorite Steven stories, which usually involved one hilarious mishap or another. “But only on the little things that don’t matter,” the chief said. “When it came to the important things, fighting fires or saving people, you never had to worry about what was going on behind you. Steven always had your back.”

But these weren’t just people who had worked with Steven…these were people who had been there when he died. They told us the story. Steven was very, very sick Sunday morning, and at a friend’s house who planned to take him in to urgent care as soon as it opened. But then, Steven collapsed, and when the friend called 911, the EMTs who showed up were Steven’s friends. They did everything to revive him, working almost 50 minutes, but couldn’t save him.

I thanked them for being there. “When I first heard that Steven got sick and died, I thought he died alone. I’m so glad you were there.”

“Yeah,” the chief said, “I’d say he died surrounded by 7 or 8 of his really good friends.”

I can’t tell you how meaningful and healing that visitation was.

After that, we went immediately to another visitation for relatives and friends. That was meaningful too, and just…the sheer number of people who showed up for us, friends and relatives who flew in at the drop of a hat, was staggering and deeply meaningful. But it did get overwhelming. Not the people, but the feeling of being on display, of having such a public grief, and the buzz of Crowded Spaces when we went to the meal after.

Then home, to bed, waking up ka-bam! super early like I have since Steven died, and the funeral.

My family went to the church early. It was the first time seeing Steven since he died. There he is, just as he’s always been. His funny little moustache my siblings made fun of. His hair that could have used a good brushing. And a Kenya bracelet on each wrist. Of course. Of course he was wearing one when he died, and the funeral home put the one we brought on his other wrist.

Oh, I could just see it. Imagine, a clear movie in my mind, imagine Steven sitting up, looking at his wrists, and then looking at us with a little smirk and saying, “Right on!”

The funeral was so hard, but also, I kept thinking, what a blessing. What a blessing to be able to cling to my sister instead of being alone. To cry tears of sadness instead of loneliness and overwhelm. To hear the ones who loved him pay tribute to him. To stand up and tell his loved ones what he meant to me.

When crafting my tribute, when trying to figure out what story to share of the thousands of options, I suddenly felt with such conviction that Steven would want me to talk about Kenya. I was the only sibling with him on that trip to Kenya in 2021, and it was a profoundly meaningful trip for him. So I did. I filled the back of my itinerary with my thoughts, and then I stopped, feeling like it contained what I needed to say.

Of course, reading my own handwriting while crying was a bit of a challenge, but nevertheless, I persisted. (Quote from Jenny: That Millennial quote keeps running through my mind…the horrors persist, but so do I.) And then the meal and the burial…you know how it goes. So many funerals I’ve been to, so similar, except now it’s me sitting on the little covered folding chair right up next to the grave.

Amy, Jenny, and I walked home from the burial, hand in hand. What a blessing that Steven is so close! When I’m in Oregon, I can visit him every day, if I wish.

Oh, Steven!

But then, the fourth stage came. The stage I thought might never come again…the laughing stage. Our home filled with Yoder relatives, and we told Steven stories. It’s impossible to remember Steven without hooting and howling with laughter. And then we remembered the other family funerals…Grandma, Grandpa, Lenny…and the wild things that had happened at each. After that came the tales of the worst funeral sermons we’d ever heard, and then the worst wedding sermons we’d ever heard.

I fear there’s a fifth stage. I felt it a bit this morning. The stage of waking up and realizing…Steven isn’t here. I have to live today without Steven. I have to live tomorrow without Steven. I have to live the rest of my life without Steven.

What can I say? The sadness persists. But at least I don’t have to live the rest of my life without the memory of Steven telling me the touch-up paint in his car was “vole’s blood.”