Eric Benner

Another year, another gathering of loved ones, another tradition we never knew we would need...that is what December 6th has become.  You see, for the most part, the emotions leading up to December 6th are actually harder than the day itself.  I don't know if it is because once December hits and the upcoming holiday hoopla is everywhere you look, we remember.  I don't know if it is because thinking about the upcoming "anniversary" takes us to a place of remembrance.  Frankly, it could be that we all simply can't remember the depths of hell brought to us that day....we only have bits and pieces, for which I am grateful.  Whatever the reason, December 6th has become a way for us to gather and honor your life on the anniversary of your death.  It is also a way for us to gather and honor the love of family and friendship and commitment, because after you left, these were the people that stayed.  The ones that picked us up, held us when we couldn't handle the simple steps of living.  These were the people that carried on in your place.  It is an honor to have them still here, in whatever capacity, as visual reminders of the bridges back to life they formed.  Thank you will never be enough.

Along the way, a different kind of hero, who is definitely unsung on most days, has emerged.  Yesterday, your best friends on this earth said that I should mention him...when I was ready.  <<<Big Sigh....>>>  So, maybe today, I am...

Much has been said about Greg....I only really get to hear the good stuff.  I know there was not so good stuff.  At least in the beginning.  And, I totally get it.  I would have said it too, before.  You see, he is your replacement.  OUCH.  Big words, bigger ouch.  Ironically, he is exactly what you wanted....for me, for the kids, for our friends and family.  WE just all assumed HE would be YOU.  And, as I sit here and type this, I know in every facet of my being, YOU gave us HIM, somehow, someway, you did.  If it wasn't Greg....it would not be anyone.  It couldn't.  Not now, not in the forseeable future.  There are one thousand reasons I know this to be true.  My parents know it, your mom, our closest friends.  It is a truth that is hard to comprehend, harder even to make sense of, yet an unalienable truth so firmly rooted that it defies explanation at times. Because Greg not only embodies the things you so desperately wanted to feel and exude and teach, he makes room every day, for the living ghost of you.  That takes a big man, with an even bigger heart, to live with us and your ghost.

This man allows us to keep you alive in our hearts without an ounce of jealousy or confusion.  He allows us to LOVE you actively and to LOVE him differently.  He sees every picture of our life "before" flash across the computer screen daily, and marries that to every picture that flows from our "after".  He allows us to MISS YOU and grieve for you and still handles all the stuff that comes with not being you.  And, we allow HIM to LOVE US.  Greg has never once tried to be you or fill the very large imprints you left....he simply steps besides your shadow and walks to the path that you started.  He forges ahead after your footsteps stop and carries your ghost, as he picks up the pieces and tries to put them back together in a very different way, but with an unselfish love as the glue.  It is incredible, actually.  And, as is all to normal in our active and busy lives, it is rarely mentioned and often fleeting in our thoughts. Two incredible gifts brought to us via undeniable love forever linked by the most horrific tragedy we have ever experienced.  Yes, two completely different realities co-existing in a confusing space.

You died, forever a hero...he lives, a hero unsung....

RIP EHB  

Sometimes it is the little every-day things in this life that prompt me to sit back in silent reflection.  The constant hustle and bustle of that Thanksgiving break seems to have prompted some much needed quiet and stillness that allowed my mind to take such a journey.  I am still in awe (and no, that is not too strong a word) over how different my life is today versus just five or six years ago.  I still refer to the before and the after...usually it is about your death, but today, it is about "us".  Before your illness consumed you, and after it made us unrecognizable.  I have felt an array of emotions, yet the over-riding one of today is that of love.  Through all of the twists and turns we have taken, the indredible highs and the absolute gut-dropping lows, love has carried us forward.  Our memories of love, an outpouring of love, old love, new love, constant love...it is the one thing that has been steadfast through the heartache, loss, grief, while marching us on to new, ever-evolving way of living.  

Love ebbs and flows, defies space and time and even logic, and allows the capacity of our hearts to become truly infinite.  As we all approach the "anniversary" we never believed possible, please know we love you, through time and space and other worlds...you are always loved.

“When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace." - Kay Redfield Jamison, author of Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Today, I learned that one of Drew's teammates came home from practice last night to police officers and chaos and the loss of his 15 year old brother who died by suicide.  Before....I would have needed all the details, the hows and whys and what nots.  Now, which is my "after"....I just know the horrific loss, questions, what-ifs and whys the family is asking.  I heard "noone saw it coming"...and all I could think of, was, "I get it".  But, I don't....I cannot imagine the loss of your child.  It trumps all other griefs.  I told your mom long ago...no one comes close to what she experienced.  It goes against the natural order and breaks you in a way that is truly inexplicable.  I am heart-broken for this family, truly.  

And, once again, it takes us all right back.  I am heart-broken for everyone this touches...his family, his friends, his classmates.  Selfishly, I look at how it reaches inside our home and hearts, especially for Drew.  He had never met this kid, but he knows what this loss is like and his heart hurts for his teammate and friend.  His first reaction was to respectfully reach out.  His second, to come home from practice, skip homework and go straight to youth group.  Interesting choice for a kid,  who like the rest of us in this household, are so far removed from church and our faith since that fateful day.  He wanted to feel grounded, safe and understood.  So, off we went, with food in a bowl, sweaty and a little stinky from practice, straight to a place of love and acceptance and comfort.  Man, I hope he never loses that.  

To this family I have never met, aside from pleasantries of races, I am so incredibly sorry for your loss.  I am here, should you ever need an hear, a talk, a cry with someone who has walked through a bit of this grief.  I cannot say how important counseling is in this process and I would urge you to reach out and find a safe person for everyone in your family.  You may all grieve this loss differently and sometimes that alone is hard to accept or understand.  I can say the most important thing is to FEEL...feel every awful feeling that comes your way.  Walk through it all in order to come out the other side.  Cry.  Scream.  Rage.  Love.  Laugh.  Forgive.  Remember.  Love.  I pray that some day in a not so distant future, you are able to find peace and acceptance, if not understanding.  Live in the love.  

Well, the Giants did it again, 2010, 2012, 2014!  I'm just glad you got to see one of them, because it meant so much to you!  Now, it means so much to US.  It's so cool that this team, like your Steelers, has such a legacy of loyalty, dedication and hard work.  I love that our kids are sooooo into it, and that, with Greg, we are able to carry on similar, yet different, traditions that always include you and your history, along with today and our present.  

On a side note, and it will be short, since it has already been so incredibly emotional for me (and, as a result, I am working on three hours sleep), I compiled Madi's senior year book pages until 3am this morning.  It was a beautiful, at times brutal, walk down memory lane, but being the person to compile her life into a small group of photos and summarize a message for her to take with her, in 100 words or less, was no easy task!  I hope you feel included, remembered, honored...because you always are.  I also hope you are proud of they way we are moving towards living this new family life, because they NEED a unified FAMILY.  They NEED to have their past family as well as their present and look to their future....I just hope upon all hopes that I am making you proud.  I KNOW they are.  

Always.....Wen 

Today, another family....another wife and children, experience their own version of day two.  And while I am sure that every single day around the world someone experiences a tragedy of their own, when a horrific, life-altering event happens, sometimes it takes your breath away.  Sometimes, you know in your heart and in your head, what true heartbreak they are living.  So, you empathize, but more than that, your own heart breaks, again, and you are taken right back to relive your own memories.  It's not that you aren't thinking of them, but more that in thinking of them, you remember.....and you feel everything again.  For them, but for yourself, too.  It's inevitable, I guess, but it's breath-takingly fresh and raw and painful.  Some may think it selfish, some may not understand, but as I sit here crying silent tears for the pain someone else is living a few miles away, someone I not only know, but considered a friend, I remember that this very same person cried tears for you, for me and for our kids a few short years ago.  

It seems crazy to me, no matter that I know this particular crazy to be a painful reality, but our lives can and do literally change in an instant.  Over the past three years, I have lived that change.  My kids and I and your mom and my parents and the Benedettis live it daily.  And so many more live their own version of it.  And yet, I/we have been so incredibly, impossibly blessed.  I am shocked at that, too.  So much heartbreak and sadness and loss....married to a new happiness, a new health and a new life.  I also know that I/we are the lucky ones....the ones who will forever be altered, who will forever grieve, but who, through grace and kindness and therapy and hard work, are living and thriving, despite losing you.  But, there is always a before...and an after.  This is some weird kind of bond those of us share.  Before and After....it just is.  

I could not have imagined that back then.  I remember not being able to breathe (and sometimes a wave of grief hits and I still can't...but now, it is for an instant, not hours or days, like before).  I remember so many of those first moments, those first hours and days.  And, luckily, I forget a bunch, too.  But sitting here, knowing a fractiion of what Susan and Missy and Jenny (and their families) are living, takes my breath away.  I am literally paralyzingly sad for them.  For what's ahead.  For them having to learn some new type of normal that they didn't ask for, that they don't want and that they have no clue what looks like.  Their pain seems endless.  And, in some ways, it will always be.  Someday, in some unforseeable future, it will lessen, but they will live with this FOREVER.  

Forever....A word that is so overused, so incredibly misunderstood, but this word will be known to them.  Intimately.  And they will learn to live with this word being a part of them always.  When they are happy, when they are sad, when they have cause to celebrate and cause to mourn.  People forget this.  They misunderstand.  They think time allows a complete experience of moving on....when, in reality, if we work really, really hard, and we are really, really lucky, we learn to move through it.  It's like a scar, a permanent reminder of something that was....That scar, deep and personal, is sometimes numb, it sometimes aches, and other  times it is just out of your memory bank, other than the fact that it is there, ALWAYS, to remind you of what was, but will never be again.  

I pray that this famil are blessed with some of the empathy and kindness and friendship and love that I was shown.  I send them love.  I send them texts.  I send them prayers.  And I have witnessed many of the same people that sent those things to me, do the same again.  I pray they get help to walk through their particular tragedy and loss, because professional help saved me and my children.  I hope that they find hope, because it is hard to face the day without it.  I pray for their day two.  Their day three and four and five and so on.  I pray for sleep and moments of peace.  For finding laughter in memories, even while in grief, because laughter heals.  I am so damn thankful for the friends that cried with me, but those that laughed with me and made me feel "normal" for just a moment...God, those were angels in disguise.  So, I guess I also pray for angels in their lives.  My angels popped up in the most unusual places, but at moments when they were desperately needed.  I pray for their faith because it is easy to lose and probably most important to keep.  

I hope that someday the Olivers learn to be happy in the little things again, but this is not a hope for today....it's a hope for some other tomorrow.  I pray for their strength, because they will need it like never before.  I pray for their process.  And someday, I pray for their new normal to be worth living.  Faith.  Hope.  Love.  All essential for this Life.  

Once again, I find myself going back to Eric's wisdom, in order to get me through....
"When do I love you? Always.  No matter what?  No matter what."  

Always love.  No Matter What.