This September 11 marks 20 years of missing my brother, Aaron Jacobs, since he was killed in the World Trade Center. A rising stock trading star, Aaron was still not shy about flapping his arms to cross Fifth Avenue, during the years we lived nearby each other in NYC. As I get closer to living longer without him than the 27 years we had together, I think of the Voyager spacecraft approaching the boundary of the solar system, the planets blips in the rear view mirror. But like ‘ol Voyager, with its Golden Disc scrapbook of Earth, I am etched with the memories of our lives together, from being an eight year old fuddy-duddy too aloof to be with jumpy three-year-old Aaron, to the years in NYC when we ate everything in town (except guinea pigs, to honor our departed pet Fluffy).

The physical etching of Aaron’s memory on my body has been an ongoing preoccupation of mine during these twenty years. In the first years of mourning him, I was convinced that everyone saw me like someone crawling out of a car wreck, and wondered at the disconnect between how ground up I felt inside and my normal-seeming pursuit of a career and family life. Aaron himself had a natural talent of not being hobbled, inside or out, by the challenges he faced growing up dealing with ADHD, and seemed to genuinely forget some episodes that I would be likely to gnaw on for years. But I was not so blessed, and in those early years often had the idea of getting some kind of physical mark–a brand? scar? tattoo?–that would announce to the world that I was a mourner and speak of Aaron’s memory as my body moved through the world. This was not a tattoo-positive time, and I knew in my heart this would be more self-punishment than something that would honor Aaron. So I threw myself into the family that Amy and I were creating and hoped our daughters would live in a way that reflected the uncle they never knew.

I also tried to write Aaron back into view, and, as some of you faithful readers may know, I have been releasing memorial stories and poems about Aaron each September 11th for ten years now. Looking back I see myself gesturing in this work towards bringing out Aaron’s physical presence–which in his last years was about 5’11”, 160 lbs, hairline just starting to do our maternal lineage’s disappearing act, fit enough to run the 1998 Boston Marathon in 3:48 or to walk the long blocks of Manhattan. I have been wrestling all this time with how to point towards the gap Aaron’s loss left in my life (and many others’ lives), while recognizing that the good in my life also testifies to his influence on me becoming who I am.

This year, coming up on the 20th anniversary of both Aaron’s loss and (that August) of Amy’s and my wedding, I started thinking and writing about tattoos again. My oldest daughter helped me reimagine my impulse to mark myself as a way to combine these two anniversaries. I loved the idea of working from a positive place of celebrating my life and family, even as they are inextricably both marked by Aaron’s loss. I started to imagine a family group of me and Amy as a pig and frog—hard to explain, but we have identified ourselves visually that way in cartoon form for a long time—and with our girls as flowers, and Aaron recognized somehow…maybe even as initials on the arm of the Josh-pig figure?

This came together more concretely around our daughter’s college pre-orientation plans last month in North Carolina, when I found a tattoo artist in Asheville whose style seemed like a match for the kind of feeling I wanted to represent. They worked with me over a few weeks on the concept, and made the great suggestion to represent Aaron as a bird. I was able to invite our girls to identify “their flowers.” And so I dropped off our daughter—after seeing the campus for the very first time (thanks COVID!)—drove out to Asheville, and the next day found myself transformed, at least superficially.

There is no end to remembering Aaron, even if the too-public circumstances of his death are moving from headlines to footnotes. But so far this tattoo is helping me feel that my life itself, and the family that Amy and I have created, are sufficient ongoing tributes to Aaron’s memory. Reader, if you’ve come here recalling Aaron or wanting to connect with me or my parents at this time, I am so grateful to you.