There is no right way to end this.
Last summer, after the final game, I had intended to write more. To wrap things up, give you a subtle overview. I had intended to end this blog with explosions, with indelible memories for both you and me. To prove to you my worth as a fan and a writer. To make you believe all the things I do.
Instead, we are here.
I doubt any of you really wondered where I went. Even while reading that I would write more, I'm not sure you cared. Things had come to a head. I had served my purpose. And when I didn't? There was no protest. It's just as well. I didn't have any more words for you. My words were somewhere else.
Mom, I hope you're reading this. Six months later. You check up on me a lot, and more than that, you support me. You would read every single word I ever wrote if you could, especially if I asked. I'm not going to tell you this is here, but I hope that you see it. I'm writing this for you.
My aunt died this summer. I wish I could tell you the exact day. I believe it was July 10th. Maybe the 11th. I learned about it after midnight, a time zone further into the night than the events unfolding. I'm bad at dates, anyway. I always screw them up.
It happened either on the day of the final or on the night before. Once again, I wish I could tell you with more confidence. To say that it overshadowed the proceedings would be an understatement. In some ways, soccer helped me to cope. It was an escape, this penultimate moment. I had been waiting for it for years, but then again, I suppose I'd been waiting my whole life for Jessie to go.
She was sick but hadn't always been. She was sick in the way that is probably worst; wasting slowly over years, illnesses and pain stacking up inside her chest. It was the type of sick that could be delayed but not stopped. She fought it in each new form and so did her family. I was removed from it mostly, living in Kansas, the creeping things taking hold a thousand miles away. Anaconda, Montana. Incongruous and black in my mind.
It may seem silly to blame the place itself, but I do. I hate that town and need it in the same breath. Some nights, I think it is out to get us, to rub the Peterson side of me out. It kills people. It really does. It killed my grandfather with alcohol. It made my uncle schizophrenic. It took my grandmother's mind. And my mother moved back to be near it. And my Aunt and her daughters are from it. And I do not know what it holds in store next. But I want to understand it. I want to make it right.
But I can't so she died on the night after or before the final and my parents called me after it happened. I was prepared because my aunt and the creeping things had been gasping for days.
For me, the sadness stretched out over months until it was almost imperceptible which made me feel like a horrible person. About a week before it happened, I took a long walk and talked to what I think is God and told him I wanted it to be over which made me feel even worse because everyone else was praying for her to get better and maybe my so called knowledge of her pain and need to die was the very thing keeping their prayers from coming true. And these feelings weren't necessarily for her, but just selfish guilt for wanting complications to be uncomplicated and when I accepted this, I felt even worse, but in an honest and I hoped helpful way. When it finally happened and my mother talked to me on the phone, I cried because I was sad for her loss and because she was crying and she was my mother.
I missed my aunt and I finally cried in my own way later, but for the first week, I was mostly sad in the way that sadness travels like a laugh or a yawn, jumping forcibly into and out of a chain of mouths whether they want it to be there or not. My brothers and I flew to Montana a few days later, meeting in the Salt Lake City airport and taking the same connection out to Butte and that whole time I thought of what the right thing was to say to my mother and cousins, but we also talked about soccer because it was something we could be distracted by.
That's where this blog ended, people. Mom. In the airplane up to Butte. I took all my words and locked them away. If I couldn't use them to talk about my aunt, I decided it would be hollow to place them elsewhere. So I didn't. I disappeared.
My mother is still sad. You are. Maybe too sad. Maybe not. I've never really lost someone CLOSE to me like she has. I can't help but have opinions, though. I'm not trying to say that she should take her sadness and store them with my words in the sky over Idaho. I just wish that she could take her sadness and tuck it inside good memories of Jessie or hope for the future with her nieces. Maybe weave them all together in a scarf that she can sometimes hang on a hook.
Because it's good to be sad. I am jealous that she feels her sorrow so sharply. I wish that I knew how to mourn instead of lament. In times of sadness, I do things symbolically, like ending a blog or riding my bike so hard over the hills that I am dizzy with pain. I do them because I think they are appropriate and because I need a rope to tie to my feelings, to connect them to me until I gain the ability to hold them in front of my face.
I love my mother and I loved my aunt and my use of the past tense brings guilt. I am so sorry for everything. I wish we all were fine. I am praying that now. I want everything back.
There is no right way to end this. To end anything.
Come back.
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