20 Years

Tonight is Kenny's 20th yahrzeit (anniversary of death). I always write this and feel this, so it's nothing new, but it's so hard to imagine what he would be like at 43. It's so incredibly disappointing to me that he doesn't get to be an uncle to my kids, and that they never get to meet him. It's so disappointing that HE could have had kids and my kids could have first cousins (they have none, even though Matt and I were both one of three). He was definitely a unique dude - almost always the centre of the room or the conversation. He brought up issues I didn't know to ask about. He explained issues I didn't understand. 

He had such a big presence - it would have been impossible to imagine life without him. When he died, it WAS impossible to imagine what life would be like without him - for all of us - his family, his friends, his ex-girlfriends :) but then slowly, life did go on, and it had a big hole in it. 

At the beginning, we missed him in everyday life. Holidays were so hard. Life events - I got married 2.5 years after he died - were painful. It was an everyday hole. But that hole wove its way into our life as our lives moved forward. Now the hole is really wide, but it's a bit shallower. His presence is barely anywhere in my life. I have a few pieces of his clothes, his guitar, his music (in storage right now...), his winter hat, and we don't think about his physical presence missing in our everyday life anymore - it's missing in an overall way. I'm not sure that would make sense to read, but to me it's been the evolution of grief.

At shul on saturday, I had an aliyah (and read torah for the aliyah) and said kaddish for him. In London, when you have a yahrzeit, everyone wishes you a long life. So I got a lot of wishes for a long life. And the rabbi said a word about him. It was super nice.

I read the part of the torah where Joseph sees his brother Benjamin after it had been a long while. Joseph had been in Egypt, and was very senior with Pharaoh, and Benjamin was brought down by Simeon, his brother, but they didn't realize Joseph was their brother. In the next aliyah, Joseph becomes overcome with emotion when he sees his brother Benjamin, whom he hadn't seen in so long, and has to leave the room. I have this recurring dream (less and less as time goes on) that I'm out somewhere, and I see Kenny, and I too am overcome with emotion, and I go to hug him, and I am thinking "he's dead. He's going to disappear when I go to hug him. This is just a dream. This isn't real." But every time, he stays there. I hug him, and it feels really nice. And THEN I wake up and I know it was a dream, but I wake up with the feeling of just having hugged him.

It's kinda funny, because I'm not sure that I EVER hugged him. We're not much of a hugging family, and we spent many a years not being the best of friends. But for his last few years, we were more like peers. Finally able to talk without him making crazy fun of me or hurting me. Had he stayed alive, I'm sure we would have become friends. It's just disappointing. And so fucking stupid that he's gone.

20 years.

This pic is from the last time I saw him. Up north, end of Dec 2003. We were lighting a menorah, hence the kippah. Upside down bc it was Kenny.