Broken Normal

There’s a video of the three of us up on Photobucket. Quiet, scattered with comfortable conversations between three best friends and a mother. If I squint, I can dive back into that memory, two years ago maybe. I can feel its fingers intertwined with mine. 1

The fingers of memory are like ghosts themselves. Its Christmas right now, and I can remember two Christmases ago like a vivid movie.2

Tiffany took the video. We were making Christmas cookies in all different shapes; trees, stars. 3

“Here comes the master,” she said, her hoarse voice happy like it often was (in that quiet way of hers) and Ariana appeared in the frame, clutching the cookie gun as if it were a power tool, expertly delivering shapes onto the cookie tin. 4

It was all so normal. We define normal as the present, or the long-term past, and that was a day that we thought would happen again and again, perhaps Christmas after Christmas. (The following year, it was only Tiff and I, building a gingerbread house out of frosting with the consistency of toothpaste. I’m not sure where Ariana was that night.) 5

And now it’s in-between normal, like I’m waiting for normal to happen again. 6

When Tiff died, I think I felt like I had to collect the memories we made with one another, count them, see if I had the proper amount. See how many memories we had? I have the right to be sad. I have the right to be confused. I have the right to not know or express how I feel. 7

It’s not about me though, I had to remind myself, it’s about Tiffany. This was June, only months after her birthday (March), after our gingerbread Christmas, after watching Pirates of the Caribbean again and again in the summertime. 8

See how many memories we had?9

It’s an echo and a fresh thought all at once. 10

Right now is a poignant time in my life. December is such a symbolic month, and I feel like it grabs my life with its icy fingers, makes memories to keep in its heart, memories that it can use when it wants to thaw out. My first Christmas without her. I still haven’t accepted that she’s gone.11

I still haven’t accepted that she’s gone. How can you? How can anyone ever accept that this person who you’ve gone and formed a connection with has died, and that connection is broken and now there’s a part of you that’s still broken and you don’t know how to fix it, and you don’t know how to make yourself normal again?! 12

This isn’t about me, I still have to remind myself. Or maybe it is about me- it certainly isn’t about Tiff. 13

Tiff was born broken, if you want it put poetically. I can’t even fathom the emotion that was her life- I never knew that she was dying. I knew she had a condition, but she was so strong and determined and I didn’t even know the condition’s name. I didn’t even know the name of the thing that killed her until after she died. 14

She was born broken, and now, after she’s died, I know she’s whole. Her dad had a dream about her. And before she died (her mom said at the funeral) she was reaching out to Christ. Literally, arms stretched to heaven…15

She was always so strong and brave. I think it was possibly the strongest and bravest thing to do, to know that it wasn’t in her hands and to accept that. “She’s dancing with the angels,” her mom said. 16

'The necklace charm,
small, silver, says “a sister
is someone to laugh, sing, dance and cry
with.” 17

I sang, laughed, danced
and cried
with Tiffany, sister-
silver or gold, I’m not sure. 18

I remember her once dancing,
twirling happy outside,
one spin, beautiful
in simplicity. 19

I’ll dance for Tiffany,
even now, a spin or two,
beautiful in simplicity.'20

You can find inspiration from death, I guess. Memories still float back to the surface, and I sometimes wonder if this image I have of Tiffany is made out of stained-glass, making her a martyr or a fairytale princess when in fact she was just a girl, one who had goals and friends and who swore and thought about boys and had a broken heart sometimes and yelled at her mom and wrote notes to me during astronomy. 21

I’m trying to make her alive again- alive here, on the present earth, though I know she’s more than alive somewhere else- through my words. Maybe that’s how I’m coping. I go through months of life, and then I realize there’s something off about life- 22

Or maybe it’s the fact that these memories are all floating around but they’re not matching up to the normalcy of Right Now. That voice behind the camera, that face in the middle of my pictures with Ariana. Did she ever exist? 23

Am I trying to make her a piece of fiction, a myth, a character I’m giving life to? I can justify myself that way, and people will say oh that poor girl, her best friend died. And she’s trying to make her immortal. How touching. 24

I don’t know. She died. Maybe I’m still waiting for her to come home from the hospital.