#54

I write and I write and I write and I still can’t believe that Eric is really gone. This should not, could not have happened. We just haven’t been able to connect on the phone lately; just keep missing each other, right?

How could my baby brother be gone? How can it be that I am never going to hear his voice again? Never going to be annoyed by him again? Never going to be excited, worried, enthralled for him again?

This is not right.

I was in line at airport security with my family at 5:00 in the morning and I said to my husband, I really want a cup of coffee. My 6 year old said, “No, you really want your brother.” And he’s absolutely right. I really want my brother. I want him to call me on his way home from work demanding “entertainment”. I want him to whine to me about how he isn’t fulfilled at his job. I want him to email me the crazy homework assignments he gets from his master’s program. I want anything but this. This, I cannot accept.

Who will help me to remember my childhood? Who will help me to care for my parents? Who will bring up my most embarrassing moments at the most inopportune times?

Who will tell me to get over myself and have the years of knowing me to back it up?

I don’t want to do this thing called life without him. It isn’t supposed to be this way.

I have been very carried away by this blog lately. I have been caught up in the creative act of writing it. I have been amazed by the response and excited about getting it out there to help others with their grief. I forgot it’s supposed to be helping me with my grief. This is not supposed to be me as writer, but me as devastated sister. I know I can be both, but the primary purpose of this blog is to help me heal. Not to offer up my emotions in posts I hope will appeal to the masses. Not to cure the world’s ills. Not to generate a following or an income. If it does all that, I will welcome it, but most of all, I want to be able to cope again.

I miss my brother. I don’t know how to get beyond that.