This annual essay begins with this word and these numbers: Briana.07.01.2017. This is the designation I used to label the file of this document.
Each time I attribute another year to my sister’s name, I wish it could somehow bump the one etched on her gravestone. That way I might have a few more days left with her. While three years have passed since she died, Briana’s presence remains, and in many ways, grows as each day passes. A few years ago, she received a camera—a toy camera called a Diana that was brought back into vogue by the Lomography movement—for Christmas. I inherited the camera after she passed, and it’s been sitting on my desk ever since.
Last month, I decided to load some film into the back of it and take it with me on vacation with my family. That way, in a sense, it was as though Briana was with us. My parents took me and my wife, Rachel, to Paris, bless their hearts, and every time we stood awestruck in front of a stunning piece of art, a historic landmark or marveled at the culinary delights on the plates in front of us, I tried to imagine my sister there, looking through the lens I was looking through. It brought me comfort, and a sense of pride—pride because I knew she would be taking the same photos I was.
When I returned from our trip overseas, I stopped in Valhalla, New York and visited Briana at her grave. I had saved the last photo on my last roll of film for her place of rest.
While using her camera may have allowed me some comfort, and perhaps some perspective, it provided brief brightness to what is a determined darkness. Over the past year, my nightmares have worsened: they’re recurring, and they each involve the same thing: spending time with my sister—who is alive in the dreams—but with the knowledge that she’s about to leave this world. The thing is, while I can talk to her directly in these dreams, if I mention her impending death, to her or to anyone else present, the outcome is still the same. I can’t save her no matter how much I want to or how hard I try.
Perhaps, in some sense, one might find it therapeutic to be able to communicate with dead relatives on the dreamscape; however, the dream version of myself is unable to enjoy the experience. All that he, I, can think about is the fact that my sister is going to die and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Invariably, the dream version of me begins to weep, my avatar’s subconscious convulsions trigger the muscles of my body and wrench me from my slumber. I wake abruptly, consumed with the feeling of despair, convinced I am weeping—but I am not. I am cold; I am stoic; I am dead. At least that’s how I feel immediately upon waking.
The third year, some say, is the worst. It’s hard to compare. It’s probably pointless to even try.
This week leading up to the third anniversary of my sister’s death is a unique one for multiple reasons, and strangely enough, some of those reasons tend to involve her. It is the week following Episode 8 of “Twin Peaks: The Return,” a stunning masterwork by David Lynch. “Twin Peaks” was Briana’s favorite television show and I have no doubt she would be smitten with the revival series. This episode was very much about death; namely, humanity’s capacity to cause it. This is also the week I am scheduled to lock picture on “No Alternative,” the movie inspired by my sister and her rapping.
There is also something else that makes this time unique: I am expecting my first child.
My wife, Rachel, and I will be having a boy in December. This revelation is both exhilarating and terrifying, and in this case, I’m not sure there’s much of a difference between the emotions. When Briana passed, there was a simultaneous upsurge of some of my closest friends having babies. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the loss of life in my own life by the addition of life in theirs. I felt like the universe had nailed a target to my back; what others gained, I would lose.
The fragility of life is an ever-present concern, given what happened to my sister, and the thought of bringing a child into the world—the world as I understood it—had always seemed a precarious proposition. But what I’m learning, and hope to continue to learn, is that life is an antidote to death. I have no idea what kind of father I’ll be; I just know what kind of father I hope to be, and will do everything in my power to transform that hope into life.
Life is hope, isn’t it?
My sister loved children; she worked with children; she wanted children. I hope my child will get to meet my sister through me, through my family, and through all the wonderful pieces of artwork she left behind for us.
If family is life, and life is an antidote to death, family is something that will never die.
Will. Congratulations to you and Rachel on your new endevour. The Adventure called parenthood. You will undoubtedly be an amazing dad as rachel be an awesome mom. I have learned that being a parent ‘is a continuous lesson of how to not take oneself so seriously to be the one and only thing you can be to that little one and that is to be genuine. To be a constant in their lives. They only need who you are and that is all. As for Brianna and all that she stood for and loved you are the vehicle with which she lives on. Remember that always .sending you lots of love from your old stomping ground.