Day 344 - Everywhere That I Am Not

Dear N,

The plan was to tell our story in order...from the supernova that formed...to the black hole that it became. How everything about us came together so effortlessly and how it took everything I had to not fall apart when I chose to follow the vow instead of you. 

I thought I could move through this logically, chronologically. 
It's simple really. 365 blog posts, regardless of how many days it actually takes me. (I've finally given up on the perfect version of the vow.) But I messed up in another way that I wasn't expecting. I started this blog too close to Christmas, to those memories of us that burn the brightest and the softest and the lovliest... The story wanted to move faster than I was ready to write it.

Then last week my brother was found dead.

Shot in the head.

And suddenly the vortex of that imploding wretching grief
is swallowing me whole once again.

The cold shock.

The disbelief.

How

the

fuck

is

this

happening

now...

...again???

Who is doing this?

Is there even the tiniest possibility that God is real?

Or Good??

What kind of sick joke is this?

Same time of year...right before the holidays?

While I happen to be writing the story

of the collapse of my universe

from 17 years ago when she died

and we died

and his innocent belief died??

And now he is really dead.

All the way dead.

Hole in the head dead.

But it's not a joke.

It's also not suicide like they first told us.

Someone is lying.
Someone put a gun to my brother's head and pulled the trigger.

I have no idea what to do.
Or what to feel.
So I write.

I write to feel...because everything else is deafening and disappearing in this torment.

I write to remember him before and not just in the last few seconds of his life when evil walked in the door and obliterated all of his hopes and his struggles, his courage and his failings, his love and his pain. I write because I'm angry, I'm lost, and I'm so guilty of the many times I didn't protect him like a big sister should. I write because it's how I know he is still real even after he has been erased from our lives.

The first words I wrote got passed around and soon the condolences started coming in.
Especially from those who still remember my sister's leaving all those years ago.

At first, it felt comforting...to be remembered, to feel the compassion, for the hurt and the horror to be acknowledged, for others to just say that they don't understand...

But then, an eerie fog settled among old feelings that never found answers of home.

And too many of the Facebook messages are from friends and family who are too far away, who barely know me anymore, but reach out with kindness just the same...

A deep loneliness stirred inside me and I realized...
...home is still in pieces and scattered...

...home is still everywhere that I am not.

My cell phone rang a few days after the news of my brother.

On that really hard day of home-less-ness.

No name on the caller ID.

Just Massachusetts.

And my heart stopped.

I'm not expecting you to call.

But my heart is.

I didn't expect you to call that night 17 years ago either. We had already been undone for so many long months. The next school year had begun and I had moved to Kansas to get away from missing you.

Then I got the news that Amber and Clayton had been in a really bad car accident.

I flew home for a few days and we thought she might live, although she was still in a coma and only surviving on a machine. I returned to Kansas. And she died a week later. My heart was deteriorating. I couldn't take any more grief. My skin felt thin and numb with my heartbeat stumbling and skidding, racing to get away from the landslide of pain. The doctor called it 'premature ventricular contractions,' but I call it "too fucking much."

Home to Virginia for the second time,...this time for her funeral.

Home in my bedroom with cotton curtains softening the farmhouse windows and a familiar quilt on the half bed,...the same bed where you had curled up next to me and kissed me and held me close to you. 


The phone must have rung, but I didn't hear it. The only thing I remember is Delbert calling up the stairs to me that you were on the phone. 
And my heart stopped.

I know you won't be calling this time.

But I guess my heart is still hoping you might.

There are lots of reasons why I shouldn't need you anymore.

But there are still lots of reasons why my heart will always need you.