Page 103 of Good Dirt

Calendar Reminder

E bby’s phone is buzzing. An event notification. She swipes to stop the vibration, then taps on the calendar icon. As if she needs the reminder.

Event: Baz’s birthday.

Repeat: Yearly.

Duration: Forever.

Her eyes tingle but she doesn’t cry. She sits there for a minute, bolted in place by the weight of what she is feeling. Then she standsup.

Today will be different.

When Ebby and Baz failed to leave the house on schedule that afternoon twenty years ago, their bicycles waiting for them beside the gardening shed, they could not have known. As Ebby begged her brother to play one last game of hide-and-seek, she could not have known. When Baz said, Just one more time, but then we’re going, he could not have known. The therapist and her parents have told her this a million times. They could not have known that two strangers with firearms were on their way to the Freeman home. A hundred different things could have happened in those few minutes after Ebby ran upstairs and none of it would have been Ebby’s fault.

No, it’s not Ebby’s fault her brother died. Of course she knows this. But it’s true he’d likely still be alive today if they hadn’t played that last game, if they’d only walked out the back door of the house just fifteen minutes before. She still wishes she hadn’t been frozen with fear at the top of the stairs, even though surely no emergency call could have stopped her brother from being shot. There was too little time.

And yet.

To keep these thoughts from consuming her takes a daily effort. Ebby sees, now, that she must follow the example of Moses, the man who carved those words on the bottom of the jar in a time of great pain. Moses channeled his grief and anger into words of perseverance when he must have felt like giving up. For generations, her family has drawn strength and reassurance from that one simple line. And now, they are ready to share it.

Today will be different.

Perhaps the only way to cope with loss, or guilt, is to name it and defy its potential to destroy you. Not run from it, as Ebby has tried to do. Her brother’s death is as much a part of who she is as her brother’s life, as are the things she prefers to remember about him. His alarm clock. His photos. Old Mo. The fun they used to have playing a few rounds of hide-and-seek.

Maybe all you can do is give yourself permission to embrace the rest of your life. To play, to love, to risk. To take the beauty that someone brought into your life and share it.