Vachon Imagined

It was August 27, 1990.

He had just completed Basic Training and AIT at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

I remember seeing a video of him.

He was yelling in the ranks as his Drill Sergeants told him what to say, what to think, and what to do.

Among all the other Soldiers, he was the fiercest.

They were screaming, but not with the velocity or commitment that he was.

It was as though someone had finally given him permission to rage.

And rage he did.

It came through his entire body.

I can still see his face.

His body bending backward as if he were creating momentum just to scream—to yell—to say, Yes, Drill Sergeant, with the fire of a thousand men.

I remember watching him and being so happy for him.

Because he had finally found a place that said:

Your rage is good here.

We want it.

We know how to use it.

It was the same story I heard whenever he stepped off the football field.

He was number 45, the rover.

I was his little sister, so I had no idea what a rover was. I only knew that his coaches said he was so good at it because he was so aggressive.

Perhaps football was one of the few places where that part of him was rewarded.

For just a moment, he was put on a pedestal.

No father.

No mother.

No little sister asking him to let her into his world.

It was just about him.

Something he could hold up and say:

This is mine.

Look what I did, guys.

THIS is mine.

I so loved that about him.

I so loved him.

And I still do.

I loved how handsome he was.

How fit.

How strong.

I loved that he could be simultaneously so mean, so violent, so deadly—and so open.

His friends would tell me that when they walked beside him, talking about anything, he wouldn’t judge them.

He would just listen.

He could make people feel like they mattered.

Like they belonged in a world that he himself didn’t quite know how to belong in.

There was something in him that was always fighting with itself.

And eventually, he took his own life.

He left us here to remember him.

To love him.

To experience him in memory.

I have spent years trying to understand him.

Trying to understand what happened.

What people did.

What they didn’t do.

What influenced him.

What he chose.

And I don’t know that any of those questions can ever completely explain a human life.

But I know this:

He was my brother.

He was loved.

He is love.

And I was his little sister.

I ran behind him.

I wanted him to love me.

And he kept pushing me away.

Perhaps he didn’t know how to love someone who reminded him of the very inadequacies he couldn’t yet love in himself.

And in chasing him, I failed to see my own.

My own rage.

My own lack of forgiveness.

My own choices to hurt.

My own choices to forgive.

My own choices to love.

For years, I thought remembering him meant holding onto him.

But maybe love isn’t holding on.

Maybe love is allowing someone to be what they were.

A whole human being.

A complicated human being.

A beautiful human being.

A wounded human being.

A loved human being.

He doesn’t need me to make sense of him anymore.

And I don’t need to make sense of myself through him.

Because every time I think I’ve figured something out, he seems to return.

Not as a ghost.

Not as a punishment.

But as a voice I can almost hear saying:

Hey, not so fast, little sis.

You’re no better than me.

You’re no better than anyone.

And somehow, that doesn’t diminish me.

It frees me.

Because he reminds me to stop separating myself from the people I think I understand.

To stop believing that I am somehow outside of the life that created all of us.

To stop searching for him in the past when the only place I can ever meet him is here.

Now.

He left pieces behind.

And for a long time, I thought it was my job to pick them up and put him back together.

But perhaps the pieces weren’t his to begin with.

Perhaps they were mine.

My rage.

My forgiveness.

My love.

My judgment.

My grief.

My life.

He was loved.

He is love.

And no matter how far he travels from my conscious mind, he returns to humble me.

To remind me:

Stop searching for me.

I am no longer in this world.

I’m a memory now.

A phantom.

And it was you who held onto me all these years.

I didn’t need to be held onto.

I simply wanted to be loved.

By you.

And perhaps by a world that so often forsakes itself for another.

And maybe that’s what he is still teaching me.

That right now is not waiting for something else to happen.

Right now is not something we have to earn.

Right now is already perfect and complete, exactly as it is.

And the greatest way I can love my brother now is not to keep searching for where he went.

But to finally be where I am.

Here.

Alive.

Loving.

And free.