The Draft Came to Pittsburgh
On the grief that lives inside the moments your sibling would have loved.
"Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened."~T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"
Tony was a Pittsburgh fan. It was not a hobby. It was a fact about himself. He would be found wearing black and gold every Sunday for the Steelers, for nearly every Penguins hockey game, and yes, even for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Our high school colors were black and gold, too. So, his wardrobe from birth to death was filled with black and gold. He talked about games days after they ended like he was still inside them. When we were teens, he would shout at the television like players could hear his sofa coaching.
He loved this city the way only someone who grew up here loves it.
Last week, the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh. Three days of American football filled our city with sports fans, music (including Bret Michaels from an 80s band Tony loved, Poison), food, and crowds. The bridges were lit up. The streets were full of people in jerseys from all over. The city he loved was at the center of a sport he loved.
This was the kind of weekend Tony would have built his calendar around for a year.
🐺
I keep having a similar conversation with my husband, with my parents, and with people who loved and knew Tony.
The shape of the conversation is always the same. Tony would have been so happy. Can you imagine… He would have lost his mind over this.
We say it and we laugh, and then we don’t say anything for a minute. The saying of it is grief. The laughing is grief. The silence after is grief.
It’s all grief seeing as grief is any response to loss.
It is not the funeral or the anniversary. It is not even the empty chair at holiday gatherings, which I expected and which still hurts but which I have language for.
Last weekend, the city he loved became the center of something he would have loved, and he was not here to see it. That floored me in a way I did not expect. I found comfort in the people who knew him sharing the same sentiment, like we were looking for a container that would hold our grief from getting too big.
What we were grieving was the present which is the future that Tony never got to experience. We knew what that future would look like because we knew him. Now we hold it without him.
🐺
Part of my ongoing relationship with Tony is that now I notice the world on his behalf. I remember the futures he was supposed to have, and in the remembering, I let those futures matter.
That is a continuing bond. It’s not a metaphor nor is it a coping mechanism. Rather, it is a relationship that keeps going after he stopped being able to be physically present in the room.
The story of my life includes Tony. He was supposed to be in it until we were old and gray. Now that he is gone, the story does not stop. It has to be re-authored in a way that lets me keep moving without abandoning him. Saying he would have loved the NFL Draft and all the ways Pittsburgh was shown off is one of the small ways the re-authoring of our sibling story is happening in my life.
It’s not denial. It’s integration between my loss and living after losing him. My work is carrying him into a Pittsburgh, a world, and a life he no longer gets to see with his own beautiful brown eyes.
🐺
If you have lost a sibling, you likely know this. You may not have had the words for it.
There is a particular kind of grief that lives inside the moments your sibling would have been most alive for:
a song they would have played too loud
a movie they would have texted you about at midnight
a team’s improbable comeback
a draft pick
a snowfall
a meal at the place they always wanted to try
an argument they would have weighed in on
a holiday they would have made harder
a fight they would have refused to let go of
a silence they would have made worse before they made it better.
The continuing bond is not always sweet. The world keeps producing things they would have loved, things they would have ruined, and things they would have made unbearable in their own particular way. They died. The world did not. We are the ones left to notice it for them and to hold the futures they were supposed to have.
If your sibling hurt you, the continuing bond does not ask you to keep holding what hurt. You can grieve a person honestly, including the parts of them you needed protection from, without rebuilding a relationship with the harm. That is also integration. That is also carrying them.
All of this is the relationship, and the relationship does not have to end.
🐺
If any of this landed, try writing on this:
What did the world do this week that your sibling would have had something to say about? Who could you say it out loud to? What was the saying like? What was the silence after?
Write for five minutes. No editing, no judgment. Just let it come.
Stay tuned for a few more free prompts later this week, plus a new podcast episode dropping in the next few days. The full Wild Grief Prompt Set for this theme (9 prompts with reflection questions) will be available for paid subscribers on Tuesday.
If any of this resonated, send it to someone who might need it, or hold onto it for yourself. Both matter.
Warmly,
Angela
Tony’s little sister 🐺
The Broken Pack: Stories of Sibling Loss is available wherever you listen to podcasts.
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