and this grief will never let me go

A Story by alexiamarie

And this grief will never let me go, said my brother.

I’ve always felt for him and I longed to understand what he couldn’t tell me. He was let go at last of this pain after decades of living with it, he must have been grateful, but he left me a bitter life to live with.

It was October 3rd, 1962, nearly midnight when I had at last seen my brother let go of himself. He had always been a drinker, but he swallowed it down with stale water so as to not let his fragile masculinity break.

I sat in the other room, trying to bear the shivering pain with a heated water bottle and moth-eaten blankets that did no use. I was cold again.

Nothing ever good happens when I’m cold it seems. I become helpless when I start to feel my skin tightening. It wants to squeeze something out of me, my soul or my countless sins, I do not know what it means to do. I lose the sense of who I am, because nothing feels right. I can barely stir my bones, the air thickens, and everything is numb to my touch.

It was then and there when I heard his bottle shatter from his fingers. I let myself sit for a little longer in the uncomfortable lingering silence, except for the sounds of his heavy breathing and my quick heartbeat. The heavy scraping on the table was what made me get up to check on him. From the doorway I found him hunched over, head in arms, back heaving up and down. With one hand he was lazily spinning a pistol on the table.

“Charles.” I whispered, still lingering in the doorway. It was a few seconds before he lifted up his head and looked at me with strained eyes. He hadn’t been crying; I don’t think I ever saw my brother cry. His mouth was slightly open, and he was staring at me with an awe-like expression.

“Charles. What’s wrong?”

He shook his head lazily and leaned back up in his chair to stare at the ceiling.

“You thought of something.”

He shook his head more aggressively. “I realized something.”

I sighed and pulled up a chair next to him. We both looked around our kitchen for a few minutes. I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular because it was hurting. He, I could tell, was lost deep in thought so I tried to pull him back into the present time. “Are you going to tell me yourself or does another drink have to get it out of that head of yours?”

“Going back was never an option.”

He had said it like it was a profound revelation that no one had ever dared to think of before. But even then my throat got stuck on something that hadn’t been there for a couple months. “No. we couldn’t. We can’t. I thought you were on terms with that?”

A full minute passed before he turned his head slowly towards me. “I don’t think we knew what not being able to go back really meant.”

He was right. We knew we couldn't go back home. But there were so many other things we destroyed besides our past.

“I think he did. I think he knew what he was doing. It seemed so easy for him.” my brother had said, and the flash of anger in his eyes caught me off guard.

This same old knot choked me again and I hated myself for thinking it wouldn’t come back. “No one, Charles. It’s not easy for anyone. He may have talked of beautiful things about…death but that’s because he was just too poetic.” I spat a laugh out.

Charles laughed too and it was forced like mine. “But death is beautiful, he wasn’t lying when he said it.”

“There’s nothing beautiful about it.” I said, a sudden rush of anger overwhelming me.

Silence passed between us.

“It’s one of the few things we can’t change.”

“It’s the only thing we can’t change.” I said bitterly.

He raised his eyebrows. “The world?”

And for that splitting moment we forgot about our terror. We could see in each other's eyes the memories sliding by. Just the happy ones. The ones that we convinced ourselves we were, at least.

I smiled. “We sure tried.”

I wanted to hug him. For the first time in two months I wanted to hug him. And I would've. I would’ve if he hadn’t done it. I couldn’t honestly tell you what made him do it because I thought he had a will to live for that fleeting moment.

And I am ashamed. I am ashamed that I thought he was going to shoot me when he picked the pistol up from the table.

But now it makes more sense why he did it to himself. He was trying to drain the shame from his own head. The shame that he couldn’t tell anyone but was found out anyway in the end.

So here I was, sitting. October 3rd, 1962, at half past 12. Wondering what we were thinking when my group of friends decided to take the train west all those years ago.

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They’re all gone. I am the one who stayed. I cannot come to terms with that�"I wish I never came back. I never would have, if not for Robin and the bittersweet memories of my town. These kept me going, through all. Those simple things that I counted worthless in my youth are the things I wish I could go back to.

It would have been better if we had all gone than for me to be alive right now and haunted by the things that happened.

I’m left with these memories and I fear to let them slip outside of my mind. I don’t think these thoughts will ever heal, it will never turn into something that I will say was for the best, that I needed it to shape my future. It was so unnecessary for all this to happen.

During the gray months that fell after my brother took his life I got cold again. I spent those nights without a single dream. I think God took pity on me and so he let me lay in silence.

I sat and watched the seasons go by, but it was always the summer months that stuck most in my throat, a knot that has never been subdued by the efforts of passing time or even my dear Robin by my side. Those sickly-sweet memories of my youth that came upon me when the sun came out and when I watched the school kids play outside of my window at the park. How I envied them.

I smoke cigarettes now, something that Robin is convinced will kill me in the end. I know she is right, but I do it, of course, because of Vincent. Sometimes when I sit next to my apartment window and smoke, I wonder if he is doing the same, in some distant city. I then wonder if he's still even alive.

I don’t drink for Charles, I can’t stand the taste or the feeling it puts in my gut, but evidently I developed anger issues from him. He would not care to be remembered by anything, good or bad, anyway. I despise him, but he was my brother so I suppose I still must love him and cherish whatever good memories we had together.

Edmund was an angel that walked this earth, I could never be anything that he was. So I just hope that I might have the same fate as him. To die, quite alone, to not bring pain on others with the knowledge of how it happened. It’s a bit more comforting that way for me, I think.

I’m more confident that I can make it, now that I write about my life. But I have made it, I tell myself. It’s been 28 years since it all began.

I am forty-three years old. I have outlived my brother, father and all of my friends.

What a severe thought to sit on my mind.