Macabre Moments

As the days pass trying to live life again, the further away I feel from you. We move forward while you stay frozen in time. I haven’t quite grasped what that means yet.

Death has rattled me. I don’t know what it means—to die, that is. Where do we go? Are we somehow aware that we don’t share the world with the living? Do you? I can’t stop thinking of where you could have possibly gone. The more I stare at your portrait, the sadder I get thinking if you knew.. if you know now.

Death has beguiled me. It’s all I think about, which is weird. There’s death everywhere; in the news or media—whether it’s war, famine, disease, or crimes. I’ve never once had a second thought about death until now. It feels like breathing in shattered glass when I think of what death means, thinking of wherever you are.

Death is strange, too. This was so sudden, just a regular Monday without warning. My mind has just been refusing the ending. It’s on a loop, over and over again, looking for what went wrong, looking for some type of preventative measure.

There was no illness. It was just a moment where the story stopped leaving nothing but a blinking cursor. We’re left holding all these pages with nowhere to go. We have all this accumulation of you—your cadence, your sense of humor, the way you laughed and thought, the way you reacted to any little thing.

It makes me sad.

Lately it feels like I’m sad all the time and it hasn’t been a long time since you’ve been gone. It feels like a lifetime ago that I last saw you smiling at your house. It was only the Sunday before, four months ago. An eternity ago.

I used to look forward to the ninth every month because it marked Jacki’s age. Now the ninth crawls in like a chill on my spine. An everlasting reminder of what took place. It unwillingly takes me back to the day I met the sherrif’s at my doorstep.. and I picture your I.D. in their hand.. and I hear the words again.. and the words replay.. and I remember the feeling of falling.. my stomach dropping, heart sinking into an abyss.. and I remember pleading.. praying..

I think the sadness burrowed itself in me that day.

This eternal sadness reminds me of a video interview with Billy Bob Thornton talking about his younger brother who passed years ago. This sticks with me:

“I’ve never been the same since my brother died. There’s a melancholy in me that never goes away—I’m 50% happy and 50% sad at any given moment…

I don’t want to forget my brother and I don’t want to forget what it felt like when he died because he deserves that, that’s how important he was to me.

…and if I have to be lonely without him, without his particular thing, his sense of humor and what he brought to life—then that’s the way I’ll honor him. I’ll be sad and melancholy about that forever…”

Your sense of humor reminded me of my dad’s. You often joked, goofed around, and had a seriously unserious way of going about life. I miss reading your sarcasm in our group chats. Sometimes it was aggressive, other times it was subtle. But it was you. Nowadays I just imagine what you would say to certain things, or wouldn’t—your silence was loud, too.

I miss hearing you laugh at your own jokes, whether you were insulting Manuel or the kids or Sofia, you’d laugh regardless, not a second too late from the punchline. And it was your laugh that said your insults toward us were 99.9% you being dumb. Nowadays I hear your laugh in my head; sometimes, when I’m feeling really down, I hear the echoes somewhere in my house, in the far-too-distant-past trying to come back. Your laugh was distinct, your signature trademark. We hear your laugh in the videos we have with you. I’m glad we do. I’m glad you were always in good enough spirits to laugh.

There were times when you would intrusively plop down next to me, shoulder-to-shoulder, and stare at me. I would stare back into your bright green eyes and ask you, “Wassup?” Sometimes you would answer with, “Nothing bro, am I too close?” and wiggle closer to me. Other times you would ask, “You need me to move?” Your answers varied, they were never the same, but I knew it was you being a clown. I never pushed you away. Nowadays, when I’m sitting on the couch, I remember these little moments wishing I could feel your shoulder on mine one more time.

I’ve had plenty of nightmares in life, often so real and terrifying they make me question reality. Losing you, by far, will always be the most painful one of all. And it always hits me in the quiet moments where there isn’t noise to drum it out. In the moments I laugh with Jack, he laughs back, or smiles, and it distracts me. But when he moves on to play with a toy, or goes with his mom, I can feel the weight of your absence on my chest. It pounds my head, screaming at me, reminding me again that you’ve gone somewhere far from our reach.

The other day we went for ice cream. It was a hot day. Steph was giving Jack small licks, and Jack was giving her smiles and curious coos. I was smiling listening to them. And like a light switch I thought of you, thinking how something so simple as a couple of scoops of ice cream isn’t something you can enjoy anymore. I silently cried the rest of the way home.

You were my second sibling, my first little brother, and you were the second best friend I ever knew. Don’t tell my mom, but sometimes, just sometimes—I can probably count the amount of times on one hand—I think of reuniting with you so I can skip the despair and turmoil. Who’s watching over you wherever you are now? I need to know that you’re okay. Would it be so bad? To be with you, so you won’t be alone?

You just don’t feel gone, bro. You’re loud in my mind and I carry you everywhere I go—when I walk into rooms, into every conversation I have, into the future my mind is still planning with you.

I always pictured life with everyone at my side, growing old and dealing with everything together. Now, I feel like a cheat when I picture myself getting old, while you remain as you are. That’s not how it was supposed to be.

Sometimes I’m scared to look at pictures of you, I’m sorry. Because this is how you’re eternalized. Forever. When I’m old and gray, you’ll still be young and handsome. They make me feel blue knowing what happened, and in the moment of trying to figure out questions like why and how could this happen, I spiral looking for answers. I’m looking where there isn’t any and it makes me feel small. I don’t understand any of it, how could this happen to you?

You didn’t give a fuck. I mean that in the bestest way. You weren’t scared of anything, and you tackled everything with your head on right, fueled with confidence. You did as you pleased with careful consideration, so why? Why did something so irreversible happen to you? You didn’t deserve it, bro. Not you—not our Chuy, the one who always said he was a beast, the one who wasn’t afraid, the one who was always the first one to have your back.

I never thought I’d experience death so soon and so close and so unrelenting and so unforgiving. To have it take someone so dear to our family, so precious, and special.

I spoke to Manuel on your birthday. You can imagine how he’s doing—you guys were each other’s favorite person in the entire world. “I wonder if he’s okay, and I just want him to talk to me and let me know.. but we can’t.” It hurt to hear him say that because I think the same thing; I wonder if you’re okay all the time.

I call my mom every day, too, though, sometimes I forget, but I do call her. I still call her when I cry and she consoles me through her tears, too. I don’t mean to trigger anything, but she always tells me to call her if I feel sad. “Quiero ir a buscar a mi hijo, pero no se donde está.” She told me that not too long ago.

Life isn’t fair. To say that is biased because I know Life doesn’t work for or against us. It just is. But I don’t care of Life’s neutrality. “That’s just the way Life is.” It wasn’t supposed to be.

But, as I told my mom, I don’t want anything to change. You blessed us with 31 years of you and there wasn’t a day where we didn’t talk amongst ourselves. I talk to you in the morning before stepping out of my house, every time I get home, and at night before going to bed. At sunset, the lights on your altar flick on, the bright green burning through the darkness of my house. I chose green because of your eyes. It’s also your birth stone color which I’m not sure you knew that, or even cared. You loved the color, though.

I don’t know when life will feel normal again, Chuy. Probably never. But I hope that wherever you are, you’re okay. I hope you’re smiling. I hope Lucy, Princess, and Stormy are walking by your side, and Cindy on your shoulder.

None of this is right.

I miss you bro. I hear you every day in my head.

Thank you for visiting me in my dreams the few times I remember. You have no idea how happy it has made me.

Te quiero mucho.

Hasta pronto carnal.