I've been in this funk for the past few days now, and it just dawned on me why. In 8 more days, it's your (would be) 30th birthday. It's that time of year again where i think about you more often than usual, where i miss you like crazy. That time of year where, despite all the good things that June and July have occuring in them, each celebration is over shadowed by the memories, emotions, and tears i shed in disbelief that i had lost you. It's been comming up on what, 9 years now since you made the call to end your life, and all i have to do is write those words and i'm back in my house; getting a phone call at the ass crack of dawn; on my first day off of a week long vacation from work. I can hear my cell phone ring. I can hear my moms voice. I can hear the shake in her words as she told me that you had overdosed and you were at Ephrata hospital in the CCU. That they suspected you to be brain dead. And you weren't going to make it. That i better get there. I had never and have never felt such a complete and udder sense of nothingness. Nothing. I never understood what people ment when they would refer to being emotionally numb, until that very moment. I hope i never feel that way again. Honest to God, i don't remember getting dressed, but i know i have never gotten dressed and out the door so fast in my life. I could barely mutter the words to the only other Jesse that's been in my life. The only words that would come out were, Jesse's o.d.ed, he's at Ephrata Hospital, I need to go say good bye. Damn you Jesse Lee, despite all the love i still have for you, you were and still are the closest thing to a brother i've ever had, I hate you for that moment. To this very day, it takes all my might when i close my eyes and think of you, to shove aside the image burned into my brain. The one of my "brother", someone who is litterally in some of my very, VERY first memories, frankly i don't have too many that occur before you walked across the driveway, i mean geez, we were what 3 maybe 4 years old. I can still remember standing in my yard in my swimming suit; as you came wondering on over. We were pretty much inseperatable from that moment on. I wish you knew how hard it is to put in place that memory right there, the one of the first time we met, to have to litterally use it to push out the memory of the VERY LAST time i saw you, the VERY LAST TIME i held your hand. For YEARS, all i could see when i would think of you, which was quite often by the way, was the image of you; laying lifeless on a hospital bed, with tubes and wires comming off of you from every which direction. Machines making obnoxious "breathing" noises. Nurses comming in and out constantly. I can still feel your hand, your lifeless yet warm hand, in mine. Though i'd held your hand too many times to count, though i had always been there for you through thick and thin. Through rehab, through withdrawl, through shooting up. Through thinking you'd lost everyone, through comming out with an illness that suddenly made everyone affraid to touch anything you might have. Who was always, ALWAYS there? Who never left your side? Who always, still does, and forever will, see you for YOU? But despite my always being by your side, somehow you were always the strong one, even when you would be dope sick, even when you were getting ready to leave to go to yet another rehab; but a rehab where the only contact we would have for what surely had to be months, would be in letter form. You still somehow managed to hold my hand right back. I hold very dear to my heart the memory of the day before you left to go to Manus House. We were sitting on your bed listening to music and talking. I started to cry, and ironically enough, "No Woman, No Cry" started playing. And though i know you had to be terrified, you looked at me and with that soft Jesse smile, started singing, "oh my little sister, don't shed no tears..." You promised me everything would be alright. Damn you. I know in that moment you could not have forseen the future. But damn you non the less. You know who helped me get through that time? Jerry and his then b___h of a girl friend. Jerry was my "light at the end of the tunnel". But given that we had burried him just a few short years before i was about to burry YOU. Given that YOU had been my saving grace when i had felt such indescribible guilt for feeling as though i had pulled the trigger that night. Given that YOU were the ONLY one who knew about the guilt i felt, about the last words i said to him just hours before he decided to end HIS life. Given that YOU knew how close we had become and the choice HE asked me to make. YOU held MY hand!!! Damn it, who was gonna hold my hand through loosing YOU????!!!!! This isn't how it was suppose to be. We were suppose to grow old. I made a promise to myself on the night of your funeral; when the first and only thing i could think about when i seen your brother, my other "brother", was OMG, i'm gonna have to burry him next, and i just simply cannot do it again. In that moment, i made a silent pact with myself that, no matter who it was that passed away next, i would NOT go to another funeral. I would not watch as another person i love was put to rest. You broke me. You were always and will always be MY Jesse. But something in me was burried with you that day.
On my way home from the hospital that day, just as everything was all at once hitting me, i got another phone call. My other Jesse's sister gave birth to her second son that morning. As i was saying good bye to you; as your life had come to an end, his had begun. I can't help but look at him and see you. We celebrate his birthday, all the while i quietly morn your loss. Every June 4th, i wish you a happy birthday, though now it's with tears in my eyes. Some people seem to think it might help me to actually go visit your grave. But, as i'm sure know, i haven't. I won't. I refuse. Because it would only end up being yet another memory it would take me forever to push out of my head. I carry with me in my camera bag, the little red metal heart that you had engraved with both our names on it. Hell, i carry you with me always, and you're right where you always were and will be until the day someone ends up burrying me, and that's in my heart. But i know you know that. You always did.
I can't help but think about you a little more right now, with all the things that i have accomplished over the last year, i wish you could be here, PHYSICALLY, to share in it with me. I want to tell you, but then it hits me, i can't. And even though it's been 9 years, it does still hit me like a concrete wall, that you're not right next door anymore. God knows in 8 more days, i would love to be able to walk across the driveway and wish you a happy 30th birthday. To ask you what it feels like. To give you shit about it. But now, this is all i got. I may have some of the most wonderful memories of you, but they're simply not the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment