Looking Forward to the Past: Digital Grieving, Rembering my Brother

My younger brother, Mark, died in a hiking accident in Long Canyon, Sedona, AZ, 10 years ago next month. I wasn't with him when he fell 45 feet from a cliff face onto his head. But I've never met the man who was. I've talked to him on the phone. He told me about his struggle to pull my brother back up by his belt, his panicked yell to an echoing canyon as he felt his grip slipping, his scramble down the mountain to try and resuscitate Mark. But I've never looked him in the eye, shook his hand, or hugged him.

When I cleaned out my brother’s apartment, I found artifacts from a life I barely recognized. Finding this man will help me find my brother. This is my journey to find him, to find both of them, and rediscover the life I had with my only sibling.

Me and Mark at a party in high school
Photo: Gary Kliczinski

After 10 years, I'm not sure what bothers me more: that I didn't hug Mark as he rode away from my apartment on his bike, taking for granted that I'd see him again soon, or that I seem to be losing traces of him in my life. I've got photos, memories, and conversations with family members. But even though he died in 2001, before twitter, facebook, and the deluge of personal web pages, I find myself Googling his name. Maybe I'm expecting to come across someone in cyberspace remembering him via blog, like I am now. Maybe I want some evidence that his life spread out and touched more just the small group of people who knew him.

Maybe. I've since realized this process is a kind of digital grieving. I know I'm not going to find much, if anything at all. His friends and mine have posted some old photos. But I keep searching, because I understand it's the searching that's important, the deferment of finding something that keeps me going, because if I can keep searching, the possibility that I might find something new about his life is always present. Of course, my searching is also my mourning. I don't think I'll ever stop mourning, though my grief has dissipated. I don't know how Mark's friend feels. I can't imagine how he deals with it, but I'd like to find out.

How does this relate to teaching?
Although I teach and publish ethnographic and performative writing on topics like grief, health, gender, and family communication, which certainly includes this project, I'll be shifting digital platforms and continue to keep this one primarily about life in the academy. It's an arbitrary distinction, but one I'm making for the time being.

As for my search for the last person to see my brother alive, you can read about my ongoing journey here.

How to "fix" a basic communication course?

Well, not fix so much as refine, revise, and improve.

My colleagues and I did some work on our basic communication course this past year with a grant from San Diego State's Course Design Institute/People, Information, Communication, and Technology institute. Here's the presentation from the CDI YouTube channel. Thanks to Suzanne and the ITS/CDI crew!

I'm planning more changes for this year, though it's a bit daunting when considering the impact on the 5,000 or so students we get in the basic course every year. Imagine steering a very sensitive, 50 foot yacht--even the slightest adjustment will be felt relatively strongly by all the passengers, and given its size it may be more difficult to readjust as the trip goes on. I've never been "yachting" (in case you get any misconceptions about professors' salaries here at SDSU!), but that seems to me to be an apt metaphor.

At any rate, watch the presentation and you'll get an idea of the complexities of teaching 5,000 first-year students (probably about 96% of all first-year students at SDSU) in a large lecture/break-out format. Of particular interest to me is the use of the facebook study group, which just happened by accident this past Spring but I plan to use deliberately this Fall. The clickers to which I refer, course response systems from einstruction.com, also worked out well. I'm interested to hear from others who've used similar technology in their classes.