2010

Thanks for driving me all the way to summer camp and helping me move in.

I showed off that text you sent me out of no where. The one where you said you love me and the one where you called me sweetheart. (I ignored the urge to call you right away and decided to call you later)

My calls went to voicemail (later that day)

(I came back home in the middle of summer camp)

I saw a incredibly beautiful garden, but I wouldn’t want to go back to the funeral home.

So many friends came to visit you.

I’ve started my Junior year of high school and my principal took me aside.

Dad found a shirt of yours. I can hear cries from the bedroom.

A lady asked Mom how many children she had. Mom said one.

Mom’s birthday passed. I would’ve texted you a reminder.

It’s your 22nd birthday today. The happy birthday note I wrote you last year is still pinned up. One of the few things still on your walls.

I turn 16 this month. My birthday wish won’t come true.

I got my license! I had to stopped myself from reaching to my phone to tell you so.

My first Christmas without you. I told my friends I had allergies as I hid my red eyes.

 

2015

I just came back home from five months abroad. I wondered how much less worried I would have been about my Mom and Dad if my brother were home.

I looked through the cabinets in his room again, searching for a note explaining why he left. Maybe I missed it.

Maybe my brother had depression. I asked the counselor if depression is genetic.

I don’t show my parents my grades because I don’t want to explain I had been struggling with wanting to do what my brother has done. (Their grief with my brother is what stopped me)

Friends tell me they have so much work that they want to shoot themselves. I quietly asked them not to say that. Because I don’t want to imagine going to another funeral where the body has to wear a beanie.

(I can’t ever be too far from my phone. Because I don’t want to receive another last text at 10:26 AM and imagine what would have been different if I had called the minutes before 10:54 AM, when he clenched his fingers together into a fist around the metal and decided to leave)

It’s been almost five years, and there isn’t any “getting over it.” It’s learning how to live with it. It’s been almost five years, and the pain of losing my best friend is no less, if not more.