today is...

the 21st anniversary of my brother's death.
Jonah Thomas Strannigan

I was 3, he was 4 and a half. It was a car wreck. My family's vehicle was hit by a logging truck. Everyone else survived, except jonah. My parents both broke both of their legs, and were in hospital beds for a month. My grandparents moved in with us to take care of me and Danielle (she was 9 mos.). I literally have no memory of that month.

I was young, so I don't remember much about him. He was autistic, so he didn't relate with me much. But he did share his box of raisins with me the day before the accident, and I will always remember that. He never shared with me, so this was unusual and special. He was my older brother, so naturally, I adored him.

He's buried in a cemetary just outside of Sacramento. When I was a kid, we would visit the grave often, and we would put pinwheels on his grave. Jonah loved pinwheels because of their resemblance to a fan. Autistic kids generally adore fans, due to their constancy and repetition. They find this soothing.

Since my parents were injured, drugged up, and hospitalized, the head pastor of our church picked out a gravestone for Jonah. He chose to put an image on the gravestone. It was a picture of Little Boy Blue, asleep on the hay. He chose to write: "Jonah Thomas Strannigan. Born: December 6, 1979, Made Perfect: August 30, 1984". I always liked that he wrote that. But, I never liked the picture. In my childish mind, I thought it was a picture of my dead brother. I literally thought it was a picture of his dead body lying on a mound of hay. No one ever explained to me that it was Little Boy Blue (I found out quite a few years later). So, I have these vivid memories of visiting my brothers grave and being really uncomfortable with the image of the boy on the hay.

For whatever reason, that image has been burned into my brain. Whenever I think of Jonah, i think of Little Boy Blue and all the confusion that ensued because of my childhood perceptions. its funny and strange.