Dear Rudy,
It turns out I have more to say. Maybe it’s just this one letter, or maybe there’s more. But after today, I’ve got a lot to get off my chest. To start, I wish there were more definitive rules about hugging. There should be a single set of laws—universal policies, non-negotiable and strictly enforced. Immediate family: hugging is okay. Friends: hugs approved if you’ve known each other for at least a year. Friends of friends, work colleagues, distant relations or first introductions: hugging prohibited under any circumstances. If you don’t know a person, how do you know you want to share physical intimacy with them? I think a lot about hugging and in what situations it is going to be expected or thrust upon me. Today was one of the worst. Sometimes in new settings it is all I can think about—is this person going to hug me? Should I start backing away now to demonstrate my aversion to physical restriction, or should I go on the offensive and hug them first to get it out of the way? I’m the queen of the ‘should we hug?’ tango and the ‘one-arm, but bodies far away from each other’ hug. There is just too much pressure and uncertainty. And I reached my hug quota for the entire year today.
I woke up this morning thinking a lot about that day last year. The worst day. When Mum got the phone call, Dad was out, and she screamed that scream that sounded like she had tapped into the pain of every person on earth. The memory of that morning has been part of my life every day since, and I think it always will be. When I’m feeling happy, it pops into my head to remind me not to be, and when I’m sad it makes itself right at home. I remember how I felt, lying in my room afterwards. The bed was hard and the pillows lumpy, as though they had decided not to comfort me at a time I needed comfort more than air. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t seem to get there. I was overwhelmed, but not in the kind of way that makes me cry. I just kept thinking, ‘why aren’t I crying?’ I hate that I didn’t cry when I heard about your death. Someone better, bigger, would have cried. Someone more worthy would howl and scream and roar. I was frozen, trapped, spinning and lost. Words, thoughts and feelings had exited my body and a shell was left sitting on my bed like a robot waiting to be rebooted. I thought about whether or not I’d have to go to school, and what was for breakfast. I thought about the Real Housewives finale, and whether I had any clean socks. My mind seemed to know I needed to ease myself into this moment slowly—too fast and I might die too. So I circled around it, touching it to see how much it hurt, and then backing away until I caught my breath enough to try again.
I thought about Ollie. He was too young to lose his best big brother. He didn’t get enough of you in his skin, in his blood like I did. I got sixteen years of your mannerisms, quirks, words and bad habits. That day I remember wanting to do something. Desperately, I wanted to do something. But I didn’t know what. It was like there was something really important that I should do but I couldn’t find what it was.
Today I cried. I cried really hard. I cried like I wish I’d cried when I found out you had died. It’s taken me a whole year to face the idea that you’re actually gone, and now I feel like it’s just happened. I’ve got a year’s worth of crying to do, so I’ll be crying for a while.
Your memorial was nice, much nicer than your funeral. Or maybe not nicer, but definitely more like you. I read a summary of your life that Mum had written, but I was angry by the time it came to the end. It made it sound like you had lived a whole life, when you weren’t even halfway through. I wanted people to know there’s nothing poetic about your death. It’s all bullshit and it’s not right. It will never be right. Then, as I was standing at the podium, in front of our whole family and all our friends, I said something I didn’t mean to but also I really meant.
I said, ‘Mitch, you’re dumped.’
At that moment I didn’t see Mitch, even though I knew he was there, but I heard Aggie. She was sitting at the front next to Dee and she tried to make her snort laugh sound like a cough. I didn’t mean to say something that wasn’t about you, Rudy, but I think you would have liked the thing I said that wasn’t about you. You probably would have laughed and not even worried about making it sound like a cough. I sat down with Aggie and Dee, and Mum shot me a look that wasn’t angry. Then she got up and told her story about the day you were born.
When it was all over I noticed Mitch wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t get a chance to speak to Dee or Aggie because I was being aggressively hugged by every distant relation I didn’t know I had, but I saw them and that was enough.
I’m glad today is over now, Rudy. I miss you.
Love, Erin