In Memoriam 

Hello and Welcome to Mother Crow. My name is Sophia Elizabeth, and this issue is titled, “In Memoriam.”

Stress, anxiety, the pressure of arbitrary deadlines, and my children’s emotional needs brought on a quiet-spell for Mother Crow. However, I was able to successfully bring myself out of this creative block by posting a poem a day on my Instagram page for the week leading up to my late brother’s birthday.

“In Memoriam” is the final compilation of this weeklong project. Please find yourself a cathartic seat in the audience as we dive into the life and death of a young man who deserves to be remembered.

I am thrilled to present:

My brother, Danny.

(May 27, 1992- August 7, 2011)

May 21st, 2023: “It Took You Dying For Me”

My brother, Danny, would be turning 31 next week, but he died when he was 19 after a year of surviving as a quadriplegic.

He was a superior athlete, so his spinal injury didn't just take away his ability to move. It stole his identity and his passion for smiling too, but his strength will always be how I remember him.

He never understood my self-loathing and harm, and he would tell me how stupid I was for not understanding my own beauty and power. He could be such an asshole at times, but I miss his brash love and our fights so much.

Poetry was how I processed his tragedy, my grief, and the need to keep talking to him. My poetry came alive when he died...

This first poem is called, "It took you dying for me," which is meant to highlight my survivor's guilt, because he certainly didn’t die for anyone else but himself.

He died so he could run again, something he was born to do.

It Took You Dying For Me

My brother, 

this poem, as you already know, 

is like the time I always cried, 

and you'd say, 

"Hey. Stop it. You're fine. 

Just shut up and take it on like your right."

because my knees were being weakened by lies, 

and I was

(I am)

an emotional pile.

You taught me to just chin up and go,

sprint through the obstacles,

work hard,

and invent fun with an expressive blow. 

It makes me feel guilty to know

that I feel stronger now than I ever did before

with you as my angel protecting me,

whether you're a cosmic entity 

soaring in your soul

or just in every tree,

it took you dying for me to find me. 

You represent honesty 

with fearless strength 

and supercilious command

hammering the fear out of me. 

I was crippling my mind

and you said, 

"Get over it and smile.

You are beautiful-worthwhile .

Our bodies are strong

and we were built to carry on.

Stop wilting this gift. 

Don't deny it."

and it took you dying for me to hear it.

May 22nd, 2023: “Look to the Angels”

When my brother died in 2011, I lived a block away from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. "Look to the Angels" was written after a walk through a part of the park that was unpaved and overgrown as the summer of his death became my first fall without him.

During this one particularly dark episode, in which I sought a hiding spot to growl and groan in, my brother appeared to me as an angel in the sunshine. First, he listened to my rage without me saying a word; I felt weightless and calm and forgiven in his sunbeams. Then, he demanded I view his death the same way he had viewed life- with light.

This supernatural experience didn't cure my grief, but it did inspire me to get up and do something about it.

My brother always did have a knack for making himself known, seen, and heard, and I will always be grateful for his angelic wisdom the day he forced me to look into his light. The day poetry started pouring out of me.

Look to the Angels

I was walking amongst leaves that had fallen down  

to goeth forth and find a place to sit and wait quietly to hear their own furious, crumpled sounds.

That’s when I saw a glistening crown with its listening bow. 

It strained the stress from my wrapped up limbs, and it beamed bright light into my strangled sins, striving to be let in. It's a temporary given 

when you're given the gift to give in to the dancing, distancing now 

where his yellow, 

this light, 

the Sun’s energetic fight, 

allowed my eyes to hear the color and the paint within my ears 

to switch their imaginations by swapping anger with tears.   

This flooding took place and filled my cup to just right. 

It was a weight for my scale  

that generally tipped towards fright, 

or the flight, 

or the plight, 

but my bitter, broken sight balanced for a moment screwed tight 

by this outspoken truth turned soul, body, and shine. 

I had been veiled by the moon looming (taking cover under the gloom swooning)

when my angel boy threw me this loop. 

Sun rays started swarming as he ripped up my chin with his fist, thumb, and grin, 

and he leaned in to say with the breath of his death and the strife of his life, 

his beauty to my moody melting my frigid ice,

“Look always up and out. 

Watch change pacing from the clouds in the air. 

Now remove your still stare 

and take yourself anywhere that is there.”

May 23rd, 2023: “Superman”

If anyone could have defied the odds, it was "Superman," and after Danny had broken his neck, I believed he would be the one-in-a-million to walk again. I still think he could have...

”Superman” is one of a few poems I wrote before Danny died. The vast majority of my poetry came after his death, but I wrote this one in hopes of him healing from his injury. I wrote it believing he'd still be here today...

I'm not sure I ever read it to him when he was alive. You'd think I'd remember that. Something in me thinks I did read it to him, but he was too depressed to hear it, or it pissed him off instead, or maybe I never got the chance to because I was too late. It was, though, the first poem I ever read aloud to an audience... at his funeral.

I still feel queasy about its naivete, about my lack of clarity, about my odd use of language, about me telling people about a story being written after the main character had already concluded it, about me trying to rewrite his life for him because his paralysis caused everyone in our family to feel out of control, because I started missing him before he was dead, because he started withering away and we all felt helpless because he was the one who had always helped us, because I just wanted him to shine bright again so badly that I envisioned the sun inspiring him as it always had before...

Despite how uncomfortable I feel sharing this poem, I think the last stanza describes who he was perfectly- a man who could. 

May 24th, 2023: “No Regrets”

My brother, Danny, lived his life with "No Regrets," and he lived it with more enthusiasm and realized potential in his short 19 years than most do in a long lifetime.

I asked him once if he would have done things differently and been more careful if it meant he wouldn't have broken his neck, and he said, with total conviction, "No."

To this day, his answer gives me solace knowing that at least he lived exactly how he wanted to. That's how he conquered life- by moving forward.

I hope to one day, too, move forward with my own life, shamelessly... just as Danny did. 

May 25th, 2023: “Memory Drops”

Memory Drops 

I hope it's just my fear

because I guess you are better up there 

but I see your face 

and I have heaviness 

sink 

in

and I cry 

because you are not here 

and you are the only person I know who lived

right in the right here, right now.

Now

you are gone.

The body is gone. 

Thee Body

is gone.

A holy angel who rocked 

and rolled every breath 

is gone

before he was ever 20.

A baby

was denied greatness,

seethed and suffered, 

was purified speechless

with no way out of his own gutter.

He refute,

put the boot in 

his fate

and jumped off so he could run.

So, I keep to my thoughts

changing pace with every memory drop.

The tears fall into and past the fog,

and I'll know for that moment

all has to be good

while half is bad.

It's just karma

and Danny's not dead.

For all we know

death is life,

and we are all much bigger.

We just have to learn how to be small first. 

This video is one of my favorite "Memory Drops" because my brother,  Danny, was a straight shootin' son of a gun who loved to have his fun. (From a favorite song of ours, "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog")

He promised me when we filmed this video on Christmas morning that he wouldn't put it on YouTube, but then he posted it immediately. He always wanted me to stop caring so much about what other people thought of me. He truly could care less about what you thought of him...

One time we were eating pizza, and I said, "Danny, I really wanna slap you in the face with this piece of pizza," and he looked at me with his big eyes and said, "Please don't," and I said, "Ok," but then I immediately slapped him in the face with that piece of pizza. And we could not stop laughing! That was our relationship in a nutshell. 

May 26th, 2023: “His Death Is.” 

His Death Is.

If I could depict what it feels like to lose a walking angel, a man who held a family together, a fatherly brother and a brotherly son, an unearthly child, the golden one, I would paint a chasm in my chest of horror and grace.

If there were any answers as to why my brother died when he was so vibrantly young and alive, it would be that death and life are one in the same, and that death can birth, nurture, and discover as much as it can erupt, consume, and dismantle everything in its way. 

Our new lives began when his life ended. 

We are a family raised by death’s chaos and wisdom. 

To his mother- the one 

who carried his life 

into creation-

his death is 

the opposite

in its irrevocable destruction. 

To his father, 

his death is 

a concrete demolition,

but the rubble that remains 

can be collected 

for restoration. 

To his sisters, 

his death is 

a bridge,

guilty and suspended,

where the roles 

left behind 

are to recreate and mend it. 

To his brother, 

his death is 

a reenactment 

on a stage 

with cloudy mirrors and a hole 

to shovel out the rage. 

And to the baby, 

his death is 

an upbringing

made-up 

like a bed-

timed story  

about colors and numbers and the name

of his family’s past glory. 

His death is

the reason 

his mother is partial and sad, 

his father rebuilds from ash, 

his sisters are juggling,

his brother is flipping,

and the baby has grown up too fast.  

"His Death Is" a birthday for new pain, perspective, and growth. Sometimes growth is cancerous. Sometimes it's like unwanted weeds. Sometimes it's a new poem from old journal entries. Grief still consumes me as I sit down to write, but I do know "His Death Is" a force for new life. I am still hoping to write a poem FOR Danny, ABOUT Danny, in honor of HIS LIFE, but as our little brother, Charlie, once said with wisdom beyond his years, "Danny is ok now. It's us who are in tears."

May 27th, 2023: “21 Yellow Balloons” 

21 Yellow Balloons

He would have been 21, so we had a party.

The hummingbird feeders were filled with too much nectar and the deck shook from his playlist on repeat. Yellow clothing buzzed like bees as we tried to remember him without thinking of the reason we had to. With the smell of salmon on the grill, glasses raised for what he loved most, I imagined him drunk. Since we’d never know, I needed more wine and one of his sweatshirts. There were yellow flowers in the pots. There were yellow flowers in the women’s hair. There was yellow, but Danny wasn’t there and it was too cold for May. 

I stumbled off the deck toward the music. I pushed the doors into his room open with my arms sticking out straight, stern and stiff in front of me. He loved classic rock. The rush of sound coming from his stereo lifted my hands to my forehead like a helmet keeping my memories in place. Why did I go in here? His sweatshirt! I knew exactly the one I wanted, too. My arms fell down. I looked up, and I saw his closet. A dial in my head turned the music down to an emotionally-induced hum. I crossed the room and walked into a white, black, and yellow wardrobe. My eyes glossed over. My feet felt numb. I stood there, cold, before reaching my hands out for two piles of his folded t-shirts. I held the stacks like they were a railing, and I was looking over the edge for something I lost. I needed a hug. I needed that sweatshirt.

When I found it, I stared at it, but I didn’t let go of his t-shirts until I heard my name being called from outside. 

“Sophie!!!!! It’s time for cake,” someone yelled. 

I took the sweatshirt off its hanger and lifted the hood to my nose. It had been washed- twice- so his smell was gone. I situated myself inside the fuzzy lining and zipped the sweatshirt up while looking in the mirror. I frowned. I looked tired. I smiled. We had the same eyes. 

“Sophie!!!!” 

I left his closet. I left his room. I stepped back onto the deck, sat down, and mumbled, “I’m right here.” 

The sound of twenty-one balloons mixed with an overcast wind wasn’t nearly as obnoxious as he would have been. I let this annoy me as I sat huddled in his sweatshirt next to the yellow balloons tied to the deck. We sang Happy Birthday to an ice cream cake, and then it was time to acknowledge where Danny had gone. My sister unknotted the ribbons. My father took out the pens. I stood next to my mother as we wrote our messages onto the yellow rubber. 

I wrote, “I miss you, Asshole. Happy Birthday,” and then we let go of the balloons. 

My balloon took a hard right turn and got stuck in the redwood tree. 

I laughed hysterically.

Danny was there all along.

"21 Yellow Balloons" is a piece I wrote while earning my degree in English and Creative Writing. The assignment was non-fiction memoir. I wrote about Danny's 21st birthday, ten years ago today.

Birthdays and Deathdays are never easy, no matter how many years have passed, but grief in the first few years can be brutal. It can be blaring. It can be a beast.

After more than a decade, my grief has evolved into something more subtle and experienced. It has grown up alongside me, but it can never leave me. Danny being my brother is a part of my identity, and losing him will forever remain a missing piece of me. And I don't actually wish for my grief to go away the same way I wish he would have just stayed.

I prefer watching his hummingbirds bathe in my tears, and I prefer missing him year after year. I prefer finding peace in my grief, not out of it or through it or pretending it will leave. 

"Grow with me as I grow. You are eternal in what I know." 

Grow with me as I grow.

~Mother Crow