Something To Hold On To

I get very sentimental about inanimate objects.

(It's only two weeks to February 4th, the 14th anniversary of my brother Daniel's death.

Lately I've been grappeling with a fear of getting married- of loving someone else that much. Because most likely he would die first. And how would I watch him die?

But my parents are aging, aren't they? Don't they suffer through some new side effect of aging every year?

And didn't my little sister end up in the emergency room last year? And sometimes, don't you lie in bed and listen to her breathe?)

To go one further, I associate my loved ones with my stuffed animals.

***

Teddy was the first. A simple name for a classic teddy bear. He was my father's, from Aeropostale. Currently I own somewhere around forty stuffed animals. I don't know what to do with them. Most of them were accumulated in childhood. Some of them more recently. Two years ago I had to put a definite stop on my stuffed animal accumulation habits, because soon I would become a stuffed animal hoarder and I wouldn't be able to bring them with me when I moved out because there would be too many.

I can't get rid of them. I can't get rid of them because they are, in my mind, connected to people I love, and worse, to those who are dead, and even stranger, to those I haven't loved yet. A strange habit I got into as a child with a dying brother. Cut me some slack. The oldest are Teddy and Boudica. And Rocky, who was Daniel's. Bullet, Jack, Beary, Leona, Calum's Otter, Heath... There are more. They all have names and I remember them all.

***

I am afraid of death. I have a confidence in the next life, but I am terrified of people dying and leaving me here alone, now. I am terrified of being a widow. I am terrified of losing a child. (Of course I am, how could I not be?) I went through a time when I was convinced our apartment was going to burn down. So I packed an emergency bag and kept it at the foot of my bed. In case I woke in the middle of the night, house in flames around me, I could grab the bag and run. In the bag was Teddy, Boudica, and Rocky. Of course. My stuffed animals, in a very real way, for years, signified life for me. I truly believed that they were living things that had feelings, needed love and care, and could feel pain. I grew out of that belief, eventually, but no one as afraid of death as I am could actively get rid of her stuffed animals that she once believed to be alive. It'd be something like murder.

I own about forty stuffed animals and I don't know what to do with them. They are intricately connected to my past; a childhood I can not reclaim or remember because it is missing a prime member. They are one of the few material things that lived through my old life. They were loved by a version of myself that no longer exists.

The problem is stuffed animals don't die. And I can't kill them. Rocky and Spotty outlived Daniel. He slept with them, loved them, touched them. And they outlived him. They're living on, in a box. And I'm living on. And every year I grow further and further from the little girl who loved her brother and his stuffed dogs, but the dogs remain the same. So I can't get rid of them. Because they are still a part of me. They are what is left of my brother. They are everything I've lost- safe, in plastic storage containers.

Yet things change. People change. Life changes. The Ronald McDonald House has been renovated and Schneiders Hospital has been renamed. I am different. My family is different. The network of people who love me is different. Every day little things change. The mural in Veselka is different. They moved George Washington Crossing the Delaware. We own a different car. We painted. Every day the New York that Daniel lived in changes a little bit more, and every day I change in it. One day, neither I nor this city will be recognizable as the place where Daniel lived.

Death is scary because death is change. Death is a no-going-back difference in the world that you can't argue and fight your way out of. So, if I keep Teddy and Boudica and Rocky in a plastic storage container, if I keep them in my emergency bag at the foot of my bed, if I love them like a time capsule, if I can keep them from falling apart.... then there they are. Unchanging. Safe. Alive.

***

But what's the point? I think about Winnie-the-Pooh, sitting in a glass box in the Schwartzman branch. I think of when he lived in Donnell, before that. He has outlived A.A. Milne and Christopher Robin. What's he doing now, but slowly falling apart?

And what the hell am I going to do with Teddy and Boudica and Rocky and the others? No one's going to erect a special exhibit and put them on display. "Stuffed Animals of Girl who Lost her Brother." Because the older I get, and the more tragedy the rest of the world goes through, the less significant my loss is. When I was six, my tragedy was unique. Now almost everyone I know has lost a parent, a sibling, a grandfather, an uncle, a best friend, a neighbor. I can't expect the world will stay the same for me if it doesn't stay stagnant for anyone else.

Some things are in my control. And until I can think of some alternative option, until I can grow out of whatever this rut is, until I can accept that one day there will be nothing in this world that was seen and touched and loved by Daniel... then I'm keeping them. All forty-something of them. Even the ones Daniel never touched. Because someone else loved those- a sibling, parent, friend. And as long as that someone is alive, then the stuffed animal is an insurance. A little piece of them. Something to look in the eye and hold on to.