This morning, I woke up and checked my Facebook, and was reminded by a status update from Catie that today is the anniversary of one of the five worst days of my life. Four years ago, today, my world shattered in a way that I never could have imagined before that moment.
Four years ago today, I lost Brett Lanier, my brother in all ways but blood, a member of "The Tribe" as we call ourselves, our cantankerous clan of friends.
This is the first year that I haven't remembered this day until I was reminded, and in a way, that makes it hurt all the more. I've moved past it; we all have, but August 1 has always been the day that I remember Brett, and all that he meant to me, to all of us. When I woke up and saw that, it hit me all the harder.
We'd drifted apart in the years before he died, but I never imagined there wouldn't be time to renew our friendship. Then he was gone, and that changed everything for me.
As much of a cliche as it is, I lost my innocence that day. I lost my feeling of invincibility. The world became slightly darker that day, and although I have moved on, it has never been so bright again. I look twice on a dark street. I carry a knife most of the time, and look more suspiciously at the shadows.
It changed the way I treat my social relationships. I swore that day that I would never allow myself to drift apart from those I care about again. I swore that I would never allow anyone to stand between me and my friends again.
It was a major turning point for my entire life. Losing Brett, and the promise I made to reconnect to the people I care about, led to me spending more time with my friends. It led to me drifting apart from my ex-wife, who had been much of the reason I had drifted from the tribe, and that was when our marriage started to fall apart. She had managed to manipulate and control me into turning my back on my tribe, and one of the consequences of losing Brett was that I wouldn't let that happen anymore.
My divorce from Misty led to me returning to college, and pursuing my dream of being a high school English teacher. It opened up my life to new friends, new experiences, and to meeting Valerie, the love of my life. I was stuck in a rut before we lost Brett, working and going home to a joyless, soullless existence. His death opened up my eyes, and set me on the path to where I am today.
***
Brett Lanier was not perfect. He was no saint. His wit was acidic, and he never failed to call me on it when I was being an idiot. The man did not suffer fools lightly. He could sometimes be impatient, and seemed more comfortable with a pen, a paper, and/or a guitar than with people sometimes. He smoked. He drank. But he was one of the most brilliantly creative artists I've ever known, and one of the best friends I've ever had. He shared with me a love of words, of writing, and of the English language. Some of the best conversations I've ever had on writing were with him, and his songwriting and my poetry and prose. He was, without a doubt, the best guitar player I've ever met, and one of the finest writers. He was a true introvert, but once you gained his friendship, his trust and his loyalty, you'd earned it, and you had gained a worthy friend. Before he died, he was moving forward with his life, out of the morass of drugs and nightlife we had all fallen into in 2001-2002; he was in school, working on music, and had met Catie, who was the best person ever to happen to him. Had he survived, I have little doubt he'd be a renowned musician by now. The world is poorer for his loss.
I went back and re-read the poem I wrote about his loss, Brotherhood, after I saw Catie's status update this morning. I edited it a little, for I've become a far stronger poet in the years since I wrote Brotherhood, and I was very emotional when I wrote it. I couldn't change much, though, for it is a raw look at where I was in the days after his death. I share this with you here, in the edited version.
Brett Lanier, my brother, I will always miss you. Thank you for the five years that it was my honor to know you, to call you my brother, my friend.
5/12/82-8/1/09
Brotherhood
By Ben Bjostad
I: Endings and beginnings
It is now, in the coldest hours of the night,
when friends and family have faded away,
it is now that I mourn. It is now that I grieve
for all the futures that you will never have,
all the days that you will never live,
all the sunsets that you will never see.
It is now that I am filled with rage
at the theft of your life, the theft of a piece
of all our lives, a rage fueled by the memories
that are all that remains of you.
It is now that I speak in poetry of brotherhood
shattered, shared moments stained in blood
that was and is my blood; I speak in poetry
for my voice cannot speak these words aloud.
My brother has been murdered in the dark of night,
and I am afraid of what the morning now shall bring.
Like flowers under snow, I am smothered
with grief and vengeance, but I am powerless.
I will never be the same again.
I need answers. I need truth. My needs are meaningless,
for I fear that we will never know why anyone
would take my brother, would murder Brett Lanier.
I will never be the same again,
yet the loss of my innocence is nothing compared
to the loss of all of his futures and all of our past.
II: Timelines
Tuesday night, the phone rings, Brett is missing,
no one has seen him in forty-eight hours.
“If we survived all the crazy shit we used to do,
nothing could kill Brett now. He’s fine,” I speak.
We gather, spend a few hours drinking wine,
those of us who were once brothers and sisters,
and I know Brett will turn up; everything will be fine.
Thursday night, the phone rings; they had found his car
two hours away, the plates had been pried off,
and I start to worry; emptiness settles upon me
like shrouds of mist, and although I refuse
at that moment to admit it to myself,
I know that everything will never be fine again.
Friday night, I get the call at work, the body has been found,
and all hope shatters like a vase, on impact
with the ground. I am frozen, broken,
ignoring the people at the counter demanding service,
these people who do not know how it feels
to feel all hope rush away, like a subway train,
leaving only empty air and tears behind.
I drive home, broken, my cell phone ringing as we seek
each other’s voices, as we share the secret language
of anger and grief, of sorrow and rage,
a shared tapestry of memory and pain.
It is not until I reach home that I break down,
choked sobs that even a long embrace can’t wipe away.
We stand there forever, and the weight of the empty sky
feels like secret police stalking the darkened streets
of a third world nation under siege.
III: The distance between us
Friendships fade. Bonds of brotherhood strain
across the chasms of everyday life,
as we follow the paths that belong to us
and carve our days and years into ever smaller hours
that we can spend with those we hold most dear.
We were brothers once.
We drifted apart, our paths diverged. Time passed,
until all that was left of our brotherhood
were the places carved out of the dust plains
of our memories. There would always be time
for our paths to converge again, for sudden reunions,
for our lives to once again intertwine.
There would always be time to reminisce
of our shared past, of the nights of fire and light
when we were young, and free, and stupid,
the days when we burned brighter than the sun.
In the days of our brotherhood,
we navigated the shadows of a daylight world,
but we were but children in the night,
scars invisible underneath our unbroken skin.
In the long nights of our grief, our invincibility
is proved worthless by a random act,
leaving only wreckage among the towers of our innocence.
IV: Say it ain’t so
We gather, from across the city we call home,
to comfort each other, to defy the shadows
that would steal our brother, take all of his future
and all of our hope, leaving broken places hidden
within the borders of our souls. There are stories to be told,
souls to be held in the comfort of our collective embrace,
the imperative we all feel: the need to be together.
We pay homage in the only way we know, with loud music,
endless cheap beer and tales of our first memories of Brett,
the crazy things we did together, the crimes we have committed
and the good deeds we have wrought. We drink, and we smoke,
we keep him alive through the emptying of our memories
into the collective space between us.
Somehow, we all end up in the darkened confines of the bedroom;
all light extinguished, lit only by the souls of the living.
Laughter and tears intermingle, swirling together in the empty space
between us, and then the guitar chords of his favorite band shatter
the space, and we are all together again. We scream the words
in a primal call for his soul, a cry for our innocence, a scream of
defiance at the savage, evil streets below that stole our friend.
“Say it ain’t so...” we scream,
we sing,
we whisper.
“Say it ain’t so...”
we plead, a wish that this was all a dream, that someday, Brett will return.
V: Burial
We come together, in this place we never wanted
to see, this quiet house of daggers, one for every
heart that enters. We come to remember Brett,
to fortify his place in each of our souls, that place
that will forever be armored now, and never
entered again. We come to bury our brother,
and no one wants to be here today,
no one here can be anywhere else.
I cannot deal with this. I don’t know how
to deal with this; I have not the shields
or armor to contain all that I feel,
but I force myself to muster the strength
as his girlfriend begins to speak to a silent church,
speaks the memories we all have of him.
She speaks of days gone by, the union of the tribe,
speaks of guitars and board games, nicknames
and dry jokes, the perch and defenestration,
Armand Balthazar and Doctor Oblivious,
and she speaks of what Brett meant to her, the love
that should have lasted a lifetime, that was cut short,
and that we are now here to remember.
She pours out memories like golden coins,
all of our voices combined in hers, reminding us
of all Brett was, and all he wanted to be.
Hours later and hours away, surrounded by empty skies
and dirt roads, in the time-forgotten red clay wastelands
of south Georgia, we spill out of cars and into a graveyard.
It is now that the tears flow, now that it hits me,
all at once, in a way that it has not hit me before.
He’s not coming back. We will never see him again.
I will never have the chance to run into him
by happy accident, renew our friendship
and relive the days where we shined so bright,
like torches in the darkness. I realize now
how completely the darkness has claimed him,
how much has been stolen from us, from me,
from everyone who has ever known him,
and everyone who will never get the chance
to know my brother, Brett Lanier.
Where do we begin to reshuffle the cards of our lives
into a tableau that once again makes sense,
that hides the missing pieces we have come to fear,
the shadows that threaten to splinter all our other bonds,
sublimated beneath the imperatives of grief?
Where do we find our balance,
how do we deal with emotions so far beyond
all that we have survived before,
all that we have survived together,
when our brother is gone?
I thought that I was strong enough for this.
Standing at Brett's graveside, I know this much is true:
I don't ever want to be strong enough for this.
The empty words fade into the dusty skies
and the two cemetery workers begin their grim work,
lowering his empty shell, stripped of all that matters,
into the soil of the Earth. We gather at the edge of the graveyard,
scraming our defiance at the murderers who killed him,
the church funeral that twisted everything that he was,
the Earth into which we have entrusted him,
the world that would take him from us before his time.
"Say it ain't so..." we scream once again,
until all that is left is our echoes in the trees.
VI: Beginnings and Endings
I would give everything for one more reunion,
one more chance to share our common love of words.
I would give everything to renew our friendship,
to rekindle the bonds of our brotherhood.
I would give everything to see you share your music,
your words, your dreams, with the world.
I will never get that chance. I wish I had the faith
to belive in an afterlife, but I lost that faith years ago,
and only questions remain.
I wish I knew why you were taken from us,
when you had so much more to give.
Farewell, my friend, who was once, and who always will be,
my brother. All our futures have been stolen,
yet the past shall remain, as a memorial to all you were,
a memorial to all that you might have become.
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