February’s Weight: Grief, Memory, and the Unexpected

Jennifer Jones
Feb 12
3 min read

Since 2017, February has been a month I dread. It’s short, it comes fast, and yet it carries a heaviness that lingers long after the calendar flips. For my family and me, it is a reminder that life can be fragile in ways we cannot control.

My brother, flamingo number four, was wonderful, exasperating, funny, and endlessly capable of getting under your skin, of course, in the most loving way possible. He loved grammar, especially billboards and signs with mistakes that made him laugh, and he shared them with us in laughter. On February 15th, 2017, he took his own life, leaving a hole that never fully heals. The guilt, the confusion, the emotions I cannot name, and the unanswered questions still sit quietly in the background. How did I not see it? How did he get to a place where he could not, or would not, reach out for help?

February 15th became a date we learned to endure.

Seven years later, on that very same day, it happened again.

On February 15th, 2024, my 14-year-old nephew was killed while riding his bike, a tragic accident that robbed us of seeing him grow up and the life he would have created. He was full of life, funny, daring, joyful, and, like my brother, sometimes exasperating, of course, in the most loving way possible. I could already see the promise his future held. Once again, grief arrived without warning, reopening wounds we thought we had learned how to live with.

Even now, at unexpected moments, the loss hits with a sudden shock, almost enough to bring me to tears.

February has become the month that asks the hardest questions. How can this happen, twice, on the same date? Why does it happen at all? The truth is, we do not know what is coming, and we do not know how to protect the people we love in every way we wish we could. Life does not offer guarantees, or clarity, or fairness.

Still, February comes, and we continue with it. I see a grammatically incorrect sign and instinctively want to send it to my brother, certain he would laugh and pass it on. I see a teenage boy, full of promise, and pause to think of my nephew, knowing we will never know where life would have led him. We tell stories. We remember. We hold onto humor as a small, necessary kind of armor.

Life does not offer guarantees. What it offers, sometimes much later, is perspective. Things fall apart, and then we learn how to live among the pieces. We adapt. We laugh when it feels almost inappropriate to do so. We fall apart ourselves, and eventually, we rebuild—not into who we were before, but into who we are now. If you are still in the thick of something hard, it does not mean you are failing. It only means you have not reached the alright part yet.

The grief in February may always be heavy, but we tell stories, we laugh at the little things, and somehow, we keep showing up for life.

My sister and her husband planted a tree in honor of those we have lost. My brother, whose tagline was "all you can do is laugh," delivered with a shoulder shrug, has been immortalized with those words beneath the tree. My nephew, who would endlessly ask, "Can I ride now?" at the dirt bike races, has been immortalized with those words beneath the tree. It is a place where we can go to reflect and remember those two laughing souls we are still learning to live without.