I lay awake all night dreading the day to come. My face was numb with wear. I had never known such grief. Only a few hours before I was beating my poor fists bloody against the front door to my parents home, from inside the house as my mother wailed. "you're brothers gone, he’s gone" she wailed. The sound of her voice will haunt my dreams until the end of my life. He had done it finally. He took that final step and took us all with him, anchored heart to heart into the darkness. I had tasted it now. Death. It was a real thing for me, beyond the loss of tertiary pets and uncles, it was real for me now. A huge piece of my life, of my identity, of my soul, of my heart was forever overdosed on fentanyl and laid forever silent. And here I was laying in bed, first one hour passed then another, and another. We were to see his corpse in the morning. I refused to at 1st, but then I knew mom would never not go, and I couldn't let her go through that alone. So Rick and I went with her.

Even now the visual memory of this will forever be etched into the fabric of my being. Not the moments before or after this incident can I recall or care to recall...

I turned the corner and the first thing I could see in the rectangular room was the silhouette of large ogre-some feet under white sheets protruding from the end of a clumsily hidden slab table. Those ridiculous large feet would never feel the bare earth between them again.

Then my eyes moved up the table, to his collapsed chest, which seemed much smaller than had been evident in life. And his face. Contorted in sadness and confusion. His final thoughts as his life ended. I wonder if in fear or grief, I could only pray to a god I've long lost belief in that it wasn't absolute terror. The thought of which shatters my heart into fragments. I wanted so much for him. I wanted so much for him to find peace and satisfaction. I wanted time to tell him how I really felt about him. Time forever lost to me now, and my punishment, my cowards reward is to choke on all that I can never tell him now when I know it matters the most. Time and experience is cruel. Its so cruel.

I approached him, with short weak steps, I swear it felt like my knees would give out before I could make it. So I sat on one of the chairs arranged for us. I let my mother, the Ricky, then Memere and aunt Liz go and say what they had to say and I stared at his face. In shame and loss and defeat. My incredulity slowly wore away to realization. And my chest heaved with great lament and heaviness... it felt like someone was squeezing me. I knew now the finality of it. It was my turn, I shuffled forward, each step feeling like the gravity of the earth would crush me beneath its weight. I couldn't look at his face. So I looked at his chin and his chest. Then the thought occurred to me that he had had an autopsy and that his chest had been sliced open and his ribs cracked and his organs removed and weighed. I began to feel nauseous so I forced myself to look at his face instead.

And there he was...

my baby brother.

dead.

Id never be ok beyond this point again.

Our invincible 3some (Me, ricky and colby) was now 33.3333333333% dead and could never be whole again...

His face was contorted in a nightshades grimace... it bothered me. What kind of a shit mortician would let him look this way? Later on everyone would tell me he looked peaceful, but I KNOW MY BROTHERS FACE better than anyone. I was the closest in proximity his entire life. I KNOW what his looks are, and I knew the look of terror on him when I saw it. It made me sick. I reached down to touch his hair, and it seemed like it took forever for my hand to get there.

I was fully expecting in that moment to feel warmth and heat. at first I could feel the prickle of his hair touching my fingers, then as my fingers settled onto his head I could feel cool lifeless indifferent cold. He was cold. Cold as the grave, cold as finality, cold as unending winter. That moment of realization broke me. All of my resolve, my strength melted away and I wept. From the boundaries of my soul I poured unending torrents of misery and sadness. My tears splattered across his forehead and began to dissolve away the makeup they had used to make him look more lifelike. I rest my face against his face and up against his unlistening ear I begged for his forgiveness. That He would forgive me for failing to help him. To forgive my failures as his guardian and letting him go so far astray. I told him that which I had never been able to, when it mattered the most which was that I was so proud to call him my brother that I loved him and I that I was a fool for not being more mature when we needed it most.

I told him I would never allow his children to go untended. I would step in and make sure they had all they needed. And that I would tell them of their fathers worth and keep his memory alive for them. 

I don't recall much of the rest of that day or really even the rest of that month. But I know now that I will never be ok. That, true adulthood is going on as less, less of what you were. Like someone who loses a limb, you just go on as less until there is nothing left.

If you have time to fix the things between you and someone you love, do it while you can. Because that window does close, and if you dont take it while you can, you will pay for it.