Retrovertigo

We broke for lunch, the crew haphazardly filing out from my California home and into the sprawling afternoon world. I meandered my way into the kitchen, smiling to myself as I found Brian leaned over the counter, picking at Brody’s plate.
“You just have to pick it off, man,” Brian smirked, tearing the crust away from the apparently edible portion of a sandwich.
I snickered quietly as I slipped into their view, Brian casting his infamous grin my way.
“Brody, just eat the crust,” I chuckled, rustling his hair as I breezed by him and buried my head into the fridge.
“Mom, crust is gross,” my son informed me as I pulled a bottle of water from the shelf and quickly cracked the lid.
I turned to face him, taking the few required steps to bridge the gap.
“You get this picky nonsense from your dad,” I smirked, snatching up the discarded pieces of bread and tossing them into my mouth happily.
“From his dad?” Brian choked. “Says the woman who refuses to eat onions!”
“And peppers!” Brody added excitedly like the little helper he was.
I gasped playfully, really dramatizing the hurt for full effect, “I feel like I’m being personally attacked.”
“You started it,” Brian grinned, leaning down to plant a gentle kiss on my cheek.
Brody nodded with wide movement, “Yeah, Mom. You started it.”
“Thank you for that,” I laughed. “What a good quip, Brod.”
He shrugged, sinking his teeth into his ham sandwich without further complaint. I let my gaze fall over him, admiring his effortless brilliance. He looked so much like Brian that it was almost unnatural. He’d inherited Brian’s cheeky smile and high cheek bones—he was all Brian, except his eyes. His eyes were all me. They were the fiercest shade of green I’d ever seen in my life; a colour no one in my life had predicted they’d turn out to be. Everyone had been so sure that Brian’s browns would overpower my jade and
Brody would be left with the deep, brooding doe eyes that I found so much comfort within.
Except Jimmy.
Jimmy had told me Brody would end up a green-eyed monster like his mother. He’d known. Even if it was just a dream, he’d fucking known.
I’d decidedly moved passed the creepy accuracy my dreamed friend had over my future life. I had a tendency to get a bit lost in the unknown so I was reluctant to dwell within it for too long.
“How’s it going in there?” Brian asked, pulling himself up onto the counter.
Brody pointed over at him with his brows pushed high up on his face, “Mommy doesn’t like when we do that.”
“He has a point,” I snickered at my husband.
“Tattle tale,” Brian jeered, sticking his tongue out at our child but making absolutely no effort to remove himself from his perch.
“It’s going fine,” I sighed, snatching another piece of sandwich my son had silently declared deplorable. “Jude is keeping the questions mostly surface value...Nothing crazy.”
“Your whole life is crazy,” Brian teased lightly.
I nodded absently, temporarily swirling around in the chaos that was Blair Haner.
“Mom?” Brody cut in, his emerald eyes flicking up into mine.
I raised my brows at him in lieu of response.
“How come Jude asks so many questions about Uncle Tyler?”
I bit at my lip, “Because he’s curious about who Uncle Ty was. Uncle Tyler was famous, you know.”
I exaggerated the famous word for added effect. Brody got a real kick out of the glamor, so I liked to really beef it up for his benefit.
“Like you and Dad,” Brody smiled cheekily.
I nodded, “And like they ask about me and Dad, sometimes people like to hear stories.”
“I like the stories,” Brody beamed satisfactorily. “Like when Uncle Tyler made you rollerblade.”
I frowned, my fingers finding my hip without permission, “I’m a big fan of that one.”
Brody laughed, declaring my pain hysterical, “Uncle Jimmy was famous too.”
The switch in gears caught me off guard. In retrospect, I supposed I should have seen the connection. Brian smiled faintly, watching as I spurred my Q&A persona into life.
“He was,” I answered slowly. “He is.”
Brody seemed to accept this, mulling it over as he munched on his sandwich, “Does Jude ask questions about Uncle Jimmy too?”
A silence fell over our trio, the room suddenly enveloped in a familiar darkness.
Jimmy plagued my mind, his laughter echoing off the void he’d left in my heart. Brian smiled supportively as I actively worked through the trauma. I refused to let Brody know the extent of the aching his questions inflicted upon my scarred soul. And he had question aplenty. From the second he was old enough to speak, the questions about his Uncle Jimmy had flooded our home.
But for me, something about Jimmy’s passing just never got any easier to digest.
“Um,” I hesitated, clearing my throat of the bread crumbs, “Yes, he does…Lots of people ask about Jimmy.”
Brody nodded, “What do you tell them?”
A child’s curiosity was fabled to be a thing of wondrous fascination. I think the world would mistakenly gush over their imagination and their desire to understand the world. I, on the other hand, found that my child’s curiosity had a way of leaning directly into my sore spots. It wasn’t his fault, really. He’d been raised in a family where there was love lost. We’d tried our best to keep our missing limbs alive, integrating their memories into our daily routine.
So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when Brody developed, for all intents and purposes, a bond with both his fallen uncles. He spoke of them fondly and was always keen to hear stories or the songs they’d left behind. To find Jimmy, Brody didn’t need to look much further
than his best friend. Owen had grown into the split image of his father.
It was almost unsettling.
“I don’t really say anything,” I answered him slowly, feeling like a failure as the words slipped through my lips.
He frowned, “Why not?”
My eyes shifted quickly from my son to my husband, who seemed to be asking the very same question without words.
“I don’t really like to talk about him,” I finally spoke.
My son objected loudly, “You tell me lots of stuff!”
“That’s different,” I replied cautiously. “You’re family.”
“I don’t get it,” Brody shrugged, taking another big bite from his lunch.
Brian chimed in, kicking his heels against our white cupboards, “Your mom gets really sad when she has to talk about Uncle Jimmy.”
“Your stories make you sad?” Brody asked me, heartbreak rippling through his tone.
I sighed, “Sometimes.”
Brody looked absolutely dismantled, “I won’t ask about him anymore! I don’t want to make you sad!”
My eyes found Brian’s with a horrified plea for help. I’d accidentally stepped into something I wasn’t sure how to back out of.
Brian hopped down, leaning against the counter to better peer into our child’s broken heart.
“We like to talk to you about Jimmy,” my husband spoke softly. “And Jimmy would have just loved you. He would have taken you down to the beach and he would have dragged you all over town, showing you off to everyone. Since he can’t do those things, the best we can do is to let you in on who he was. All we can give you is the stories of our life with him…We like to share those stories.”
Brody looked at Brian with a hint of understanding before moving his gaze over to me. His expression was far less enthusiastic as it landed on my hesitation.
“But you said people want to know about Uncle Tyler,” he said, confusion overriding the former retention.
I nodded, letting my hand fall lightly against Brian’s back, “They do.”
“Don’t they want to know about Uncle Jimmy?” Brody continued. “How come you can’t tell stories about him? How come you tell Jude about Uncle Ty but not Uncle Jimmy? That isn’t fair!”
Brian let his head fall limply to the side, looking up at me as if he’d been wondering the same thing all this time. I was feeling personally attacked again.
I sank my teeth into my lip, “I don’t know, Brody...I just don’t like to talk about it with other people. Jimmy was—”
“But Dad does,” he cut me off, informing me of this tidbit like I wasn’t already aware. “Dad talks about Uncle Jimmy all the time!”
“I wish I had a better answer for you, Brody,” I sighed. “I really do...But I just...I don’t like to talk about him to people that didn’t know him.”
“But that’s sad,” my son told me with a distinct glisten in his eye.
Brian’s interest was caught, “What’s sad?”
“It isn’t fair!” Brody informed us both angrily.
Brian and I exchanged confused glances. Brody had his share of feelings about Jimmy once he’d understood what it meant to have died. We’d walked him through tantrums and heartache, pushing our own qualms aside to better assist our child. But it seemed we’d accidentally stepped into a bear trap.
“Why isn’t it fair?” I tried, gently and calmly.
“Because!” Brody exclaimed, emotion hanging off his little voice. “I love to talk about Owen! Owen is really funny! And he is my bestest friend and I know other people will think he’s funny! That’s what best friends do!”
My heart snapped.
But Brody wasn’t done with me, “Uncle Jimmy was your best friend, Mom!”
“I know that,” I managed weakly. “And I love to talk about him with our family. It’s just that—”
Brody shook his head wildly, “It’s sad that you can’t tell people stuff about him! Owen talks about him! Auntie Lo and Uncle Matt talk about him! Daddy talks about him! I have seen tv stuff and dad talks about him lots!”
Brody had effectively worked himself into a rant. His rants were usually accompanied by a significant series of emotions and this one was hardly an exception. I could hardly blame him; he had been forced to comprehend depth from an early age. Most kids were exposed to death in time—but Brody was brought up within it. He felt deep connections to people he’d never met, and with that came a fierce desire to protect them.
“Brody,” I cooed, abandoning my stalemate to race over to his side. “Stop, it’s okay.”
Brian looked like his heart may have been breaking too.
“You should tell the whole world about him!” Brody told me passionately. “Uncle Jimmy was really cool! He was so funny! You need to tell people the duck story! And that he liked hot dogs! And that he said your music sucked!”
“Hey!” I laughed faintly. “He never said my music sucked! You shouldn’t even be saying that word.”
Brody chuckled quietly, his emotions slowly levelling out, “Sorry...”
“He really didn’t say that,” I insisted playfully, pinching at my son’s cheek to try and summon a smile.
He nodded glumly, “Then tell them that. Tell them he thought you were super cool.”
“He did think she was super cool,” Brian echoed affectionately, staring straight into my soul from across the counter.
Brody flailed his arms, “See? Tell them!”
“Okay,” I assured him half-heartedly. “I’ll tell them Uncle Jimmy thought I was super cool.”
“It’ll make you feel better,” my son told me.
I looked to Brian who only nodded. Damn those two: always teaming up against me.
I smiled, running my fingers through his brown hair, “Okay, Brody.”
“Okay,” he mimicked, abandoning my affection in favour of his father’s poorly crafted sandwich.
Brian met my gaze with a steady support lingering behind them.
It had been seven years. Seven years of tight-lipped memories and refusals to acknowledge them publicly. Seven years of private mourning and dedication.
If it meant so much to my child, and assumedly something to Brian, I decided quietly to myself then to at least try. Maybe I could start with a story, like the ones I’d tell Brody or Owen...but I’d graciously bow out long before December of 2009.
But I could try the past on for size, maybe in a new shade.
For Brody and his wild request, I would try.

Notes

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